Secretary of State John Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have reached their predictable collapse, but the U.S. news media still shies away from blaming Israeli intransigence and expansionism – nor advocating stern action against the land grabs, as Lawrence Davidson explains.

By Lawrence Davidson

In 1988, Yasser Arafat declared independence for Palestine based upon the notion of two states living in peace in historic Palestine. The border between those two states was to be set roughly at the armistice line established at the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The Palestinian state’s capital was to be located in East Jerusalem.

That was 26 years ago. Finally, on April 14, 2014, the editorial board of the New York Times decided that Arafat was correct and the “principles” that “must undergird a two-state solution” are those he had proposed. Of course, the board did so without ever referencing the great Palestinian leader.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (State Department photo)

Not only did the Times declare the pre-1967 border and a shared capital at Jerusalem necessary and valid, but it called on the U.S. government to do the same: “It is time for the administration to lay down the principles … should the Israelis and the Palestinians ever decide to make peace.”