Kerry seeks to soothe Israel security concerns on Iran deal

Secretary of State John Kerry held a three-hour long meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday before heading to similar talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as peace negotiations entered a fifth month without any major breakthroughs. 

The meeting was aimed, in part, to placate Netanyahu after world powers reached a temporary agreement last month with Iran to curb Tehran's nuclear program — a deal that infuriated Israel's leaders. 

Netanyahu at the time denounced the Nov. 24 accord in Geneva as a "historic mistake," increasing strains in an alliance already marked by his past disputes with President Barack Obama over strategy on Iran and negotiations with the Palestinians. Despite that, Kerry said Thursday that the “bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable.” 

"While occasionally, we might have a difference of a tactical measures, we do not have a difference about the fundamental strategy that we both seek with respect to the security of Israel and the long-term peace of this region," Kerry said. 

Kerry said Thursday that Israel's security was a necessary part of its ongoing peace negotiations with Palestinians, a process he described as making some progress.

"We have always known that this is a difficult, complicated road, and we understand that," Kerry said at the end of his three-hour morning meeting with Netanyahu. "I believe we are making some progress, and the parties remain committed to this task."

After his meeting with Netanyahu, Kerry met with Abbas, whom he thanked for the "seriousness of his effort" to remain committed to negotiations. 

While not going into many details, he affirmed that the Palestinians, along with the Israelis, had unique concerns in the negotiations process.

"I think the interests are very similar, but there are questions of sovereignty, questions of respect and dignity which are obviously significant to the Palestinians," Kerry said. 

By most accounts, however, negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have made little progress, despite an April 2014 target date for reaching a deal. 

Palestinian officials said the two sides remain divided on the key issues of borders, security, the status of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, while Israeli officials accuse Palestinian leaders of hampering the talks by refusing to recognize the country as a "Jewish state."

The construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank has continued despite criticism from American and European governments, whose officials have said that continued Israeli resistance to halting such efforts threatens the possibility of any peace agreement.

Netanyahu, offering his own rundown of the meeting with Kerry, said Israel is ready for peace but "must be able to defend itself, by itself, with its own forces against any foreseeable threat."

"If this process is going to continue, we're going to have to have a continual negotiation," Netanyahu said. He cited a need "to have these real discussions inside in a sustained effort to bridge historic gaps and provide security." 

On Wednesday, Yuval Diskin, the former head of Israel's security agency Shin Bet, said the "implications of not solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict present a greater existential threat to Israel than the Iranian nuclear project." 

Diskin made the comments during a speech marking the anniversary of the Geneva Initiative — a draft agreement backed by a group of current and former Palestinian and Israeli politicians as well as academics and other key figures.

Diskin also said during his speech that Israel should freeze settlement activity and issued a warning that settler numbers in the West Bank could approach levels that no government would be able to remove. 

Despite tension between Israel and the U.S., the leaders of both countries expressed their commitment to maintain a good relationship at a meeting earlier this year.

"America's support for Israel's security is unprecedented, and the alliance between our nations has never been stronger," Obama said in March. 

"Israel has no better friend than the United States of America," Netanyahu said at that same news conference. 

But those statements came before last month's nuclear deal with Iran.

"This agreement has made the world a much more dangerous place," Netanyahu said in November. 

"Tough talk and bluster may be the easy thing to do politically, but it's not the right thing for our security," Obama said, following Netanyahu's comments. 

The tension got so bad that senior Israeli officials suggested that the government needed to find new allies, and Israel remains upset about the Iran deal, saying Tehran could still make a nuclear weapon.

In a recent poll undertaken by the Israel Democracy Institute at Tel Aviv University, nearly 80 percent of Israelis believe the deal won't stop Iran's nuclear program. Israel Broadcasting Authority political analyst Mitchell Barak seemingly suggested that Israelis believe Iran has the same intentions as Nazi Germany.

"Something that people need to understand about Israelis is the whole shadow of how the state of Israel was created, and what hangs over our heads, 60, 70 years later, and that is the Holocaust," Barak told Al Jazeera. "In every generation, someone is trying to wipe us out, and we have to fight back."

That includes fighting back even if it means being at odds with a historic ally and because the U.S. didn't heed Israel's advice over Iran, Kerry has lost leverage, according to Barak, over his top priority — Israeli-Palestinian peace.

"Now he's going to come to Netanyahu of extreme diplomatic weakness and ask him to make concessions on something that is very difficult. I find it very difficult that Netanyahu is going to budge one centimeter," Barak said. 

Al Jazeera and wire services. Jerusalem correspondent Nick Schifrin contributed to this report.