In addition, he is strongly arguing that there are just three conclusions of the situation - two state, one state which is a democracy, and one state that is an apartheid state. If you look at the articles posted, this is considered a very strong statement -- with RW Jewish organizations actually calling for Obama to fire him.
In fact, his statement is identical to the summary that Ari Shavit comes to, though he adds a 4th worse possibility - ethnic cleansing driving out the Arabs. His summary argues that Israel still has a majority favoring a two state solution.
Some left scholars have hypothesized that American and Israeli liberals have used the possible 2 state solution as a veil that lets them ignore the dissonance in their moral believes that would see the current situation for what it is by arguing that it is temporary.
Last January, Tom Friedman, who was both a Jerusalem and a Beirut bureau chief for the NYT, had an article that argued that what Obama approved and Kerry has done is to "test" the possibilities. He, of course hoped that it would lead to a peace settlement. However, in his title "Kerry is Scary" and his lead paragraph, he argued that if it failed it could be bad for Israel. The title initially threw me because he actually has often been positive about Kerry and never really negative. His summary addressing what could happen if it fails is interesting in the context of this article:
But if either or both don’t agree, Kerry would have to take his mission to its logical, fanatical conclusion and declare the end of the negotiated two-state solution. (If not, he loses his credibility.)
If and when that happens, Israel, which controls the land, would have to either implement a unilateral withdrawal, live with the morally corrosive and globally isolating implications of a permanent West Bank occupation or design a new framework of one-state-for-two-people.
So that’s where we are: Israelis and Palestinians need to understand that Kerry’s mission is the last train to a negotiated two-state solution. The next train is the one coming at them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/opinion/friedman-why-kerry-is-scary.html
At this point, Kerry still would like a two state solution, but he clearly is someone honest enough to not take what in the US would be the easy way out --- which is to assign 100% of the blame to Abbas. Doing that would make most of Congress happy and most of the Powers that be happy -- it however is not the truth. Kerry's statement here deserves credit given that he had to know that it would lead to many people - including many who supported him for decades - to be furious.
I suspect that had Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren said this DU would be ecstatic. That it is Kerry, who has spent enormous energy trying to make things better here, makes it more impressive.
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