The normally polite and restrained world of international diplomacy has been anything but since last Friday's United Nation's Security Council resolution condemning illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The resolution was carried 14 votes to 0 – with the United States failing to veto it as expected. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by calling in the ambassadors of all the western countries which voted for the resolution and reprimanding them. Special condemnation was reserved for Barack Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry, whom Mr Netanyahu accused of secretly orchestrating the "shameful" resolution.
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More diplomatic ructions followed on Wednesday when Mr Kerry gave a speech saying Mr Netanyahu's continued support of settlements was undermining any hope of a two-state solution, and that this was a deliberate strategy to appease right wing elements of his governing coalition.
Mr Netanyahu has made plain his growing aversion to the Obama administration this year – criticising the Iran nuclear deal the US helped broker as "bad and dangerous" and travelling to Washington to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress without informing the White House as to its contents. So it's possible there was an element of retribution in Mr Kerry's Washington speech. Another interpretation, however, would that it indicated the Obama Administration's frustration at what it considers to be repeated Israeli intransigence and duplicity over illegal settlement-building had finally boiled over.
Mr Netanyahu's furious reaction to the speech was entirely to be expected given his testy relationship with Mr Obama. That incoming president Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli settlement-building, along with most of Congress, may have added to Mr Netanyahu's pique. However, Mr Kerry's speech was no more than a statement of the obvious, which is that while Israel professes to be committed to a two-state solution, it has effectively derailed any possibility of a negotiated peace settlement by allowing Jewish settlers to build homes on land seized from Palestinians in the Arab-Israel war of 1967.
Israel is correct in pointing out that the Palestinians' refusal to acknowledge Israel's right to exist, or to renounce violence, is a major impediment to any negotiated settlement. Nor can it be blamed for "appropriating" choice bits of conquered territory to use as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations. But Israel's ever-expanding occupation of Palestinian land – settler numbers have reached 600,000 and may top one million by 2030 – suggests peace is less of a concern than establishing a Jewish majority in Eretz Israel.
Israel's military strength (and the unswerving support it receives from Washington) means it can ignore the UN resolution and keep expanding its settlements on Palestinian land. But no amount of legal hair-splitting can disguise the fact that this amounts to permanent occupation. That was the unpalatable fact Mr Kerry raised in hopes of restarting the peace process.
