US Secretary of State was almost certainly warned by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. His advisors would also have alerted him to the danger. Much of the media in the Arab world, including this newspaper, told him it would happen. And now it has. As the talks for a Palestinian settlement get under way after a three year hiatus, the Israelis have, almost nonchalantly, throw a spanner into the works. The Netanyahu government has agreed to provide subsidies to West Bank settlements which, until recently, even it had considered illegal. Moreover, this flagrant snub to the international community which condemns as illegal the entire settlement program in East Jerusalem and the Occupied West Bank, has been wrapped up in the seemingly plausible packaging of “security”. Yet again Israel is presenting itself as the victim and the Palestinians as the aggressors. And just in case this message is insufficiently provocative, the Israeli cabinet has listed 600 illegal settlements and outposts as being earmarked for “priority development”. Thus, does Netanyahu continue to pursue the insidious policy of “facts on the ground”, which has now seen half a million largely fanatical Zionists move onto stolen Palestinian property. Now the question is, what is Kerry going to do about this? Given all the warnings that would have been evident from even a cursory study of past Israeli tactics around peace negotiations, it is unthinkable that Barack Obama's new secretary of state, has not anticipated what could very well be an effective buffer to further progress. By moving to sabotage the renewed peace process, before substantive talks have even begun, the Israelis have demonstrated spectacular bad faith. Is the Obama White House going to let them get away with it? Or will it take some move to impose a sanction on this cynical and two-faced Netanyahu government? Kerry's problem is that even the mildest of sanctions, such as the delay of a military equipment delivery or aid check or even the hint of an investigation into Israeli intelligence's industrial and military secret-stealing operations in the United States, could go seriously wrong. Rather than obliging the Israelis to rescind their provocative moves in the Occupied Territories, it could trigger the sort of manic Zionist lobbying that past administrations have rightly feared. Any meaningful action against Israel would be akin to take a lump hammer to a hornets' nest. The political mayhem would not only destroy any hopes of successful peace talks here in the Middle East, but it could very well jeopardize the effectiveness of the Obama administration itself, and — let us not be shy about this, given Israel's record of political assassinations — it might even endanger the life of the president himself. Yet there could be some other leverage, for instance some of the many skeletons in Israel's political cupboard, that could be deployed by Kerry and his team to try and make Netanyahu take these new talks seriously. There might indeed be some political blackmail to oblige the Israelis to really look for a successful outcome, rather than yet again playing their game of charades. If Kerry did not realize that Israel would do everything in its power to make it impossible for the Palestinians to sit down with them at the negotiating table, then he is not the smart operator that his cheerleaders pretend. He cannot accept this act of Israel bad faith, knowing it jeopardizes all his plans for peace. So what is he going to do about it? What is his Plan B?
