U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks on Middle East peace at the Department of State in Washington December 28, 2016. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan |
Britain scolded U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
for describing the Israeli government as the most right-wing in Israeli
history, a move that aligns Prime Minister Theresa May more closely with
President-elect Donald Trump.
After U.S. President Barack Obama enraged Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by refusing to veto a UN Security Council
resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building, Kerry's public
rebuke of Israel has unsettled some allies such as Britain.
Amid one of the United States' sharpest confrontations with
Israel since the 1956 Suez crisis, Kerry said in a speech that Israel
jeopardizeds hopes of peace in the Middle East by building settlements in the
occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
While Britain voted for the UN resolution that so angered
Netanyahu and says that settlements in the occupied territories are illegal, a
spokesman for May said that it was clear that the settlements were far from the
only problem in the conflict.
In an unusually sharp public rebuke of Obama's top diplomat,
May's spokesman said that Israel had coped for too long with the threat of
terrorism and that focusing only on the settlements was not the best way to
achieve peace between Jew and Arab.