John Kerry has begun sitting down with Palestinian and Israeli leaders to discuss potential peace talks for his fifth round of meetings in the Middle East during an eight-nation wide tour.
For Kerry, who just finished up a verbal volley with Saudi Arabian Prince Saud al-Faisal on Tuesday, none of these extensive efforts will be in vain. The Secretary of State has given Israel and Palestine until September to come together and settle on a peace agreement, with near-assurance that he will emerge from these round table discussions victoriously.
"Long before September, we need to be showing some kind of progress in some way because I don't think we have the luxury of that kind of time," he said during a press conference with his counterpart in Kuwait, one of the stops on his Middle East trail. "Time is the enemy of a peace process. The passage of time allows a vacuum to be filled by people who don't want things to happen."
As Kerry knows, the difficult part won't be getting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas together in a room-the real challenge lies in making them stay put, a Foreign Affairs article contended.
In that same piece, author Aaron David Miller referred to Kerry as "The Lone Ranger of the Middle East."
"Forget envoys and experts: Kerry is committed to pursuing Lone Ranger diplomacy," he wrote.
And, indeed, the U.S. Secretary of State has certainly taken two major world issues into his own hands by conducting on-the-ground work for the past three months, aiming for an end of discussion at the very least.
Since March, Kerry has been working to put forth a tangible bill that might push Israel and Palestine to get rolling on peace talks.
Prime Minister of Israel Netanyahu recently said that he and his cabinet did not accept President Abbas' call for Israel to accept new borders that make Palestine a free state, differing from June 1967's drawn lines. Tensions continued mounting as Netanyahu moved forward with plans to build a housing community meant to drive out Palestinians in occupied areas of East Jerusalem.
In the face of these roadblocks, co-chairman of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information Gershon Baskin said that "Kerry is not giving up," in an interview with the New York Times.
"The question is where does it go after that, because each side is going to confront their own political public inside their own camps, and they're going to face difficulties moving forward," Baskin said.
Kerry acknowledged the tough road he's forged thus far, and the issues he is sure to encounter ahead. But, he said, that's no reason to stop.
"I wouldn't be here now if I didn't have a belief that this is possible," Kerry stated.
