Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

John Kerry Talks Peace Prospects With Israeli and Palestinian Leaders

John Kerry spoke with Israeli and Palestinian leaders about peace prospects in the Middle East.

Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, spoke on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and met Wednesday with Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator.

Kerry raised with Netanyahu the Obama administration’s call for Israel to reverse its decision this week to appropriate 1,000 acres of West Bank land for settlement expansion, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

At their meeting Wednesday, Erekat presented to Kerry a plan for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank within three years based on U.N. resolutions.

On Thursday, Psaki’s deputy, Marie Harf, would not comment on Erekat’s proposal.

“It was a constructive conversation, covered a range of issues including Gaza, Israeli-Palestinian relations and recent developments in the region,” she said. “They agreed to keep talking in the weeks ahead.”

Kerry, after intensive efforts to advance peace talks, has pulled back from involvement since talks collapsed in April.

Psaki said that Netanyahu and Kerry also discussed the threat posed in the Middle East by Islamist extremists, particularly the Islamic State, or ISIS, which this week beheaded Steven Sotloff, a journalist who was a dual Israeli-American citizen.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.