John Kerry says recent trip to Israel and West Bank focused on Israeli security

“On this visit, I spent most of the time focused on Israel’s security concerns, because for years and years and years it’s been clear to me, from every Prime Minister, that, unless a Prime Minister can look the people of Israel in the eye and make it clear to them that he has spoken for Israel’s security to a certainty, he cannot make peace. It is a prerequisite,” said America’s top diplomat at the Saban Forum in Washington Saturday. To claims that such an emphasis is unfair, he said that Israel’s history has made such concerns “a fundamental reality”. Still, he said that the Palestinian desire for statehood must be met with effective institutions. “After waiting so long for statehood, the Palestinian people deserve effective state institutions, and Israel and Jordan must know that they will have a reliable and responsible neighbor, not a failed state, living between them,” said Kerry.

Kerry said that it is imperative for a two-state solution to be achieved if Israel’s identity is to be preserved.

He remarked, “There is another existential threat to Israel that diplomacy can far better address than the use of force, and I am referring to the demographic dynamic that makes it impossible for Israel to preserve its future as a democratic, Jewish state without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a two-state solution.”

- Plan to destroy Syrian chemical weapons “on track”

Switching to Syria, Secretary Kerry said that the United Nations Security Council plan to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles is on schedule.

“The process to remove and destroy those weapons, I can report to you today, is on track to be completed by the middle of next year. And we, the United States, will provide a capacity to destroy those weapons. And we are working with the Russians to contain them and move them and ship them to take them out of Syria itself,” he said.