US secretary of state John Kerry on Saturday said there were questions about how long the Palestinian Authority could survive and warned of the impact it would have on Israel.
“President Abbas spoke more despairingly my friends, than I have ever heard him about the sense of hopelessness that the Palestinian people feel,” Mr Kerry said in a speech at the Brookings Institution.
He said that Israel would have to shoulder some of responsibility, such as providing basic services in the West Bank, if the Palestinian Authority collapsed.
More than two months of Palestinian knifings, car-rammings and occasionally shootings have killed 19 Israelis and a US citizen. Israeli forces have killed 102 Palestinians in the same period, of whom 63 were identified by Israel as assailants or caught on camera carrying out assaults.
The bloodshed has been fuelled by Muslim agitation over increased Jewish visits to East Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound — Islam’s third holiest site and also revered by Jews as the location of two biblical-era temples.
Israeli officials privately accept that the violence is likely to continue.
The Palestinians are also frustrated by the failure of decades of peace talks to deliver them an independent state and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, with many also losing faith in the leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Mr Kerry travelled to the region in November to try to stop the ongoing violence.
He said that the level of distrust between the two sides “has never been more profound”, calling for an end to the violence before it worsens yet again.
“Without the Palestinian Authority security forces the (Israel Defence Forces) could be forced to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers to the West Bank indefinitely to fill the void,” Mr Kerry said.
“Are Israelis prepared for the consequences this would have for their children and grandchildren who serve in the (Israel Defence Forces) ” he questioned.
He also condemned the building of settlements by Israel and said that nearly all of Area C, which makes up about 60 per cent of the West Bank, was “effectively restricted” for Palestinian development.
“Settlements are absolutely no excuse for violence, no they are not, and we are clear about that. But the continued settlement growth raises honest questions about Israel’s long-term intentions and will only make separating from the Palestinians much more difficult,” he said.
“There are no easy answers, but we can’t stop trying to find solutions that move us closer to peace,” he said.
In November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the marketing of land for the construction of more than 400 homes in two settlements in East Jerusalem.
Some 5,00,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem among 2.4 million Palestinians.
The World Court says that the settlements Israel has built there are illegal, a view that Israel has repeatedly disputed.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Prime Minister insisted that his country is not heading toward becoming a binational state, rejecting a warning to that effect by US secretary of state John Kerry.
At his weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Mr Netanyahu said “Israel will not be a binational state, but in order to have peace, the other side needs to decide that it wants peace as well.”
