OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel’s hawkish defense minister drew rare U.S. condemnation Tuesday over reports he had denounced Secretary of State John Kerry’s quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace as messianic and obsessive.
In a strong rebuke to Moshe Yaalon, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that, if accurate, Yaalon’s remarks were “offensive and inappropriate, especially given all that the United States was doing to support Israel’s security needs.”
Yaalon’s remarks were quoted in the best-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth as having been said behind closed doors.
“Secretary of State John Kerry – who has come to us determined and is acting out of an incomprehensible obsession and a messianic feeling – cannot teach me a single thing about the conflict with the Palestinians,” Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Yaalon as saying.
“The only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone.”
Kerry has been on a diplomatic blitz in recent weeks to persuade Israel and the Palestinians, who resumed statehood talks in July after a three-year deadlock, to agree on an outline proposal addressing the core issues of their conflict.
Responding to the Yedioth report with a written statement, Yaalon – who stopped short of denying he had made the personal attack on Kerry in private conversations – described Washington as an ally of utmost importance.
“When there are disagreements, we work through them inside the room – including with Secretary of State Kerry, with whom I hold many conversations about Israel’s future,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already at odds with Washington over settlement building on land Palestinians want for a state, scrambled to try to avoid a damaging crisis with his country’s closest ally over Yaalon’s remarks.
In Parliament Tuesday, Netanyahu appeared to take Yaalon, a member of his right-wing Likud party, to task, extolling Israel’s shared interests with “our great ally” in Washington.
“Even when we have disagreements with the United States, they always pertain to the matter at hand and are not personal,” the prime minister said.
Yaalon has often cast doubt on the chances of reaching a deal with the Palestinians, and he has been a strong supporter of settlement building.
One of the sticking points in the negotiations has been Israel’s demand to maintain a military presence under any future peace deal in the Jordan Valley, between Jordan and the West Bank.
Kerry has presented the sides with ideas for security arrangements in the Jordan Valley. Neither has publicly endorsed them. According to Yedioth, Yaalon said: “The American security plan is not worth the paper it is written on.”
Carney, repeating an earlier State Department statement on the controversy verbatim, hit back at Yaalon over the alleged comments.
“Secretary Kerry and his team … have been working day and night to try to promote a secure peace for Israel because of the secretary’s deep concern for Israel’s future,” he said. “To question his motives and distort his proposals is not something we would expect from the defense minister of a close ally.”
The dispute erupted a day after the U.S. media published excerpts from a memoir by former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in which he said he had tried to get Netanyahu barred from the White House, accusing him of being arrogant and ungrateful.