NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, April 30, 2014, 4:00 AM
Wednesday, not with a bang but a whimper, came the deadline of the Obama administration’s push for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.
If anything can be salvaged from the wreckage of this ill-designed, naive, misbegotten adventure, it must begin with a profoundly humbled President and secretary of state.
If, that is, John Kerry lasts long enough in the job to correct course — having just undermined trust with an outrageous remark about Israel.
Kerry, who throughout the talks placed disproportionate pressure on the Jewish state without forcing the Palestinian side to make meaningful concessions in return, jumped the shark Monday by warning that Israel may well become “an apartheid state” if it fails to heed his counsel.
Meaning, according to the United States’ chief diplomat, the most open and democratic nation in that part of the world is this close to becoming a deserved global pariah.
Then came understandable outrage, and a predictable quasi-apology from Kerry about how he would choose a different word if he could “rewind the tape.”
Too late. Too damaging. Too revealing.
The question now is whether President Obama will step in to impose reason on his secretary.
He might want to remind Kerry of his own view of the subject in 2008: “Injecting a term like ‘apartheid’ into the discussion doesn’t advance” the goal of peace. “It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.”
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