Secretary of State John Kerry is a veteran and experienced politician. You won’t catch him saying the word “occupation,” not even when he refers to the territories captured in the 1967 war, which has its 46th anniversary this week. When an American politician appears at the AJC Global Forum, the American Jewish Committee, he is especially careful in choosing his words. So when Kerry told such a pro-Israel audience in Washington that “the status quo is simply not sustainable,” he actually meant that continuing to tread water is detrimental to Israel. When Kerry said to Jewish activists, “being secure in its future as a Jewish state, but also a democratic state,” he was hinting that Israel is on the verge of a head-on collision between these two central principles. Even now, the population living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River is made up of 5.9 million Jews living side-by-side with 6 million non-Jews. In other words, Kerry is saying that time works against Israel’s most vital interest — maintaining its Jewish and democratic identity.

According to a report presented this week by Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Kerry has allocated two more months for the renewal of negotiations. Judging by the place accorded to this issue on Israel’s public agenda, most of its decision-makers and opinion-shapers believe time is on Israel’s side. They are wrong.

It was actually the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who adopted the rule that “no date is sacrosanct” in reference to the implementation of Israel’s commitments under the Oslo Accord. His fluid timetable provided opponents of the agreement with many opportunities to mar the atmosphere of reconciliation through terror attacks, on the one hand, and expansion of settlements, on the other. Time is only on the side of those seeking to erase the Green Line, the June 4, 1967, border that constitutes a red line for the Arab side (with mutual land swaps) between Israel and Palestine. On the other hand, the Green Line has become very blurred in Israel’s collective memory. After all, Israelis have already been living with the occupation for 46 years. The point can be made the other way round: Israelis have only lived without occupation for a total of 19 years. Most Israeli citizens were born after June 4, 1967, or emigrated here after the Six-Day War. They don’t know any other condition except occupation. As far as they are concerned, there’s no other reality.

The dispute over freezing settlement construction and the guidelines for negotiations with the Palestinians contributed to the advocates of the status quo five whole years. Kerry appears to have understood that in order to move into a new phase, of conflict resolution, a deadline must be set for ending the tiresome negotiations over the terms for the launch of negotiations. At first he set May as the target month for the first meeting between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) acquiesced to his request to delay, for now, the Palestinian appeal to the UN organizations, among them the international criminal court, for punitive steps against the Israeli occupation. But May came and went, and Kerry got another extension from the Palestinians — until June 7. This date will not make it into the history books, either. The settlers will keep laughing at the Americans and their “peace process,” while they forge ahead and erect another illegal outpost.