Moribund

After his disastrous attempts to manage the president's "red line" in Syria and his calamitous efforts to deal with Russia in the Ukraine, Barack Obama's bumbling Secretary of State, John Kerry, is ready for an encore. He has chosen the Arab-Israeli peace process. No matter that the Palestinians, as always, refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, have no clear leader, are divided internally, and continue to press for "the right of return"—the logical equivalent to native American's demanding that they be allowed to take over much of mid-town Manhattan real-estate because they once lived there. Charles Krauthammer comments:

The crowning piece of diplomatic futility, however, is Kerry’s frantic effort to salvage the Arab-Israeli negotiations he launched, also against all odds and sentient advice. He’s made 12 trips to the region, aiming to produce a final Middle East peace within nine months.

It is month nine. The talks have gone nowhere. But this has been a fool’s errand from Day One. There never was any chance of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas concluding a final peace .

Now in the 10th year of a four-year term (there never was a reelection — he just stayed in office), Abbas doesn’t have the legitimacy. With half of Palestine (namely Gaza) controlled by his rejectionist mortal enemy Hamas, he doesn’t have the authority.

And he doesn’t have the intention. Abbas openly refuses to (a) recognize Israel as a Jewish state, (b) yield the so-called right of return (which would flood Israel with millions of Palestinians, destroying the state demographically) and (c) ever sign any agreement that ends the conflict once and for all.

Any one of these refusals makes a final peace impossible. All three make the entire process ridiculous. Kerry has given up trying to get a final agreement. He’s given up on even getting a “framework agreement.” He’s reduced to simply trying to keep the moribund talks going.

To say that this administration's Middle East foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster, doesn't begin to describe the damage it has done. In every country (Egypt, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran) and every situation, the Obama administration has made the wrong decisions, backed the wrong players, and increased the likelihood of violence and war. With respect to Israel, Barack Obama has been passive-aggressive. Claiming to be this small democracy's great friend (he is NOT) he shores up his domestic support in the nation's Jewish community. But his actions belie his words.

This latest attempt at pressuring Israel to make a very bad deal with a leaderless people isn't only irresponsible, it's dangerous—for Israel, for the region, and for the United States. It's also typical of what this administration does.

Abbas will go to the UN in a bid for "statehood" in an effort to create a UN-sanctioned terrorist state on Israel's border. Krauthammer comments:

One that Abbas is trying to make irrelevant. On Tuesday, he essentially turned over the negotiating table by signing on to 15 U.N. and international conventions as the “State of Palestine,” thus publicly undermining the essence of the U.S. peace process and humiliating the hapless secretary of state. Kerry will likely ignore the insult and carry on regardless. Uselessly.

Instead of trying to stave off the U.N. bid with the release of Palestinian terrorists and an American spy, perhaps the administration could simply stop fighting Congress, which developed a far more effective method. Under law, any U.N. agency that recognizes “Palestine” has its U.S. funds cut off.

Don't hold your breath.