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Kerry: Our Goal Is to Eliminate the Rockets and Demilitarize Gaza

(BBC-U.S. State Department) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told the BBC on Tuesday: "We fully support Israel's right to defend itself and the fact that it was under attack by rockets, by tunnels, and it had to take action against Hamas. Hamas has behaved in the most unbelievably shocking manner of engaging in this activity. And yes, there has been horrible collateral damage as a result of that, which is why the United States worked very, very hard with our partners in the region, with Israel, with Egyptians, with the Palestinian Authority, with President Abbas, to try to move towards a ceasefire." "Finally now, that ceasefire is hopefully in place in a way that can allow parties to come to the table and be able to not only deal with the question of how do you do a sustainable ceasefire, but the more critical, underlying, longer-term issues of how are we going to make peace? How are we going to eliminate these rockets? How are we going to demilitarize, move toward a different future? And that's really our goal." "What we want to do is support the Palestinians and their desire to improve their lives and to be able to open crossings and get food in and reconstruct and have greater freedom. But that has to come with a greater responsibility towards Israel, which means giving up rockets." "The United States stands behind Israel's right to defend itself, and we do not believe that it is appropriate for any group, particularly in the circumstances that we've seen in this terrorist group, Hamas, to be flying rockets against civilians randomly into the country, tunnels coming underneath the kibbutz, with people that we've seen discovered with handcuffs and tranquilizer drugs ready to capture people in the midst of their daily lives. No country can live with that condition, and the United States stands squarely behind Israel's right to defend itself in those circumstances, period."
2014-08-06 00:00:00
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