Israel is concerned that Martin Indyk, chief of the American negotiating team and former US ambassador to Israel, will tender his resignation shortly. According to reliable information received in Jerusalem, Indyk will return the keys and resume his post at the Brookings Institution. On April 29, the nine months allotted to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations had run their course. What will also run its course is Indyk’s leave without pay. It is believed that in light of the stalemate in the talks, Indyk will not extend his leave and will walk away from the negotiations. However, a final decision has yet to be made. An explicit request from US President Barack Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry might change that.

“It’s such a pity that John Kerry fostered some of the traits of [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu,” a senior member of Israel’s shrinking peace camp said on the night of April 28, in a personal, closed talk. As someone who has been closely following the peace process and is in the swim, what he was referring to was Kerry’s reverberating statement, which also was said in a “closed talk.” What the secretary of state said was that unless a two-state solution was achieved, “a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens — or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state.”

The Israeli speaker's reference to Netanyahu involved a well-known Jewish saying talking about how his conduct will always lead him to eat rotten fish, and get driven out of town as well — meaning that his behavior pattern always leaves him both empty-handed and humiliated. After all, the Israeli speaker notes, Kerry said the right things, which are also being voiced publicly here. Even Netanyahu has been using recently the idiomatic phrase of "danger to the Jewish majority." So, why does the secretary need to panic and apologize and take it all back? Ultimately, Kerry spoke up, drew lethal criticism from the Republicans, was forced to retract and by doing so he undid the impact his statement should have left on the parties — yet at the end of this loop, he found himself battered, beleaguered and humiliated. And this, says the Israeli source, is simply because he dared spell out the truth.

Kerry’s statement, published in The Daily Beast, was made on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, April 27. Last year, I published an article here, referring to the Holocaust as the Israeli narrative, whose impact on shaping the country's mindset and image is enormous. A day earlier, April 26, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas released an unprecedented statement, calling the Holocaust “the most heinous crime ever perpetrated against humanity.” And what do you think the official Israeli reaction was? Abbas’ statement elicited a long, derisive snort. From Netanyahu to the last right-wing Knesset member, nobody addressed the real merit of what Abbas had said. That, however, did not stop any of them from quickly arguing that you cannot recognize the horrors of the Holocaust while at the same time forging an alliance with Hamas — an organization that denies the Holocaust and seeks to annihilate Israel. Although this assertion is somewhat founded, these reactions nevertheless attest to the Israeli mindset. Israel looks only in the convenient direction, seeing only the half-empty glass. It ignores any positive element. It keeps searching high and low for any random excuse, pretext or something to latch onto to prove that there is nobody to talk to, that there is no point in talking and that peace doesn’t stand a chance.