U.S. declines to veto U.N. Security Council resolution for Israel to stop Jewish settlement activity

[karynnj]

86. Not true at all - even Netanyahu does not claim that

All of that said, with this criticism it seems like the Israeli government wants the conversation to be about anything other than the settlement activity. And the fact of the matter is, as you heard Samantha say, since 2009, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased by more than 100,000 to nearly 400,000. There's been an increase of more than 15,000 in the last year alone. Since 2009, construction has begun on over 12,700 new settlement units in the West Bank. There are now nearly 900,000 -- I'm sorry, 90,000 settlers living east of the separation barrier that was created by Israel itself. And the population of these distant settlements has grown by 20,000 since 2009.

So this is not simply a matter of construction within the so-called blocks, within what has long been considered the likely borders of a future -- within a future peace agreement. We have acknowledged publicly that there will have to be an acknowledgement of the growth since the 1967 lines were established as a part of any future peace agreement. But in fact, what we've seen is much more accelerated settlement construction. And now the total settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem exceeds 590,000.

Prime Minister Netanyahu recently described his own government as "more committed to settlements than any in Israel's history." Those are his words. And we're concerned about these trends. We were concerned after our election, when one of his leading coalition partners, Naftali Bennett, declared that "the era of the two-state solution is over."

So, for us, the question here has always been about what is the best way to pursue the security that the Israeli people deserve. And we cannot simply have a two-state solution be a slogan while the trend lines on the ground are such that a two-state solution is becoming less and less viable.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141647865

Netanyahu is completely dishonest - as most of the Israeli press noted in articles after the last elections there. His government has taken actions that make a two state solution less likely -- and around half of his cabinet do not even pretend to support one. Obama and Kerry, on the other hand, are men of integrity and honest.

You are throwing the Democratic President of the United States and his Secretary of State under the bus for Netanyahu, who has more in common with Donald Trump!!