Upon embarking on his fifth visit to Jerusalem, in an attempt to restart peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, Secretary of State John Kerry stated in Kuwait: “We need to be showing some kind of progress before September,” when Palestinians can start exercising their rights at the United Nations after achieving the status of an observer state.

This statement alludes to the United States’ attempt to pre-empt any initiative by the Palestinian state to join any UN agencies, especially the International Court of Justice, by giving the impression that peace talks are back on the table. In this regard, Kerry is seeking to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to show some  “flexibility” to relay it to the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, when he meets him later on in Jordan.

The so-called “flexibility” is sought both to discourage Abbas from using the prerogatives of the new legal status of Palestine at the United Nations and push him back to “negotiations without preconditions.”

Kerry’s eagerness to protect Israel’s “immunity” is evident, as he is buying time at the expense of the Palestinians’ exercising their rights in the United Nations, and trying to lure them into a process that has become futile. At the heart of the futility of negotiations is the ambiguous legal status of Israel in the occupied territories, an ambiguity that is allowing the proliferation of settlements and issuing more licenses to build new homes in East Jerusalem.