From the start of John Kerry’s push for a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, nobody except the secretary of state held very high hopes for success. Kerry declared confidently he expected a comprehensive deal, a “final status agreement over the course of the next nine months.” Everyone else responded to his optimism with little more than a benign smile.
Eight months later, what the parties have reached instead of an agreement is a deep impasse. The inevitable question arises: What’s next?
The nine-month period concludes at the end of April, and negotiations have produced what seemed almost impossible: a puncturing of Kerry’s optimism. After thousands of miles of trans-Atlantic flights and hundreds of hours spent on the mission during a time of turmoil in other global hotspots, Kerry gave a press conference last week in Morocco in which he admitted things were not going well. It’s time, he said, for a “reality check.”