US Secretary of State John Kerry last Thursday sharply rebuked Israel in a speech explaining the US refusal to veto UN Security Council resolution 2334 demanding an end to illegal Israeli settlement building. It was an important and powerful farewell to the region to which Kerry has devoted huge, fruitless diplomatic energy, and a sign of the deep frustration both he and President Obama share at what he described as their ally's jeopardising of hopes of peace.
The rapid expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, he warned, meant that “the status quo is leading toward one state and perpetual occupation”. Bluntly, that Israel was set on a course to destroy any hope of a two-state solution that has been the cornerstone of international diplomatic efforts for peace.
Many would have wished to see such forthrightness before now, and particularly before a Trump presidency gives Israel the green light to continue full steam ahead.
The speech was welcomed by messages from Germany, France, Canada, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and others (Ireland included?), but drew a sharp and most unusual rebuke from the UK's Prime Minister Theresa May.
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Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who pointedly said he looked forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump, accused Kerry of being "obsessed" with settlements, a language that was strikingly echoed by May's spokesman who said that it was clear that the settlements were far from the only problem in the conflict, and focusing only on them was not the best way to achieve peace between Jew and Arab. She also criticised his characterisation of the Israeli government as "the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by its most extreme elements", a description that would be hard to dispute.
As the somewhat miffed State Department observed, it was an odd intervention, not least given that the UK had actually voted in favour of the UN resolution which reflected its longstanding policy.
A less than noble explanation, one that reflects poorly on Britain's cynical diplomatic priorities, may lie, however, in May's apparently desperate desire to curry favour with Trump before he assumes office, in the hope, as Kim Darroch, British ambassador in Washington, put it rather too candidly, that May and Trump could "build on the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. "
That dubious legacy of mutual adoration is of British prime ministers fawning to US Republican presidents in the hope that uncritical flattery would make the fabled "special relationship" real – Tony Blair disastrously promising George Bush that the UK would back him on Iraq "whatever".
May’s rebuke of Kerry will have delighted Trump. “”We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect,” he tweeted. “Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!” She may have been the ninth national leader he rang after his election, but she’s going up the pecking order. And to hell with the Palestinians.