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.”
