Appearing as a guest on CBS This Morning Saturday, Time magazine editor at large Karl Vick painted the Israeli government as being to blame because a two-state solution has never been attained during Mahmoud Abbas's tenure as Palestinian Authority president.
Not mentioned was Abbas's history of refusing to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rejection of a two-state plan in 2008 by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, which would have included East Jerusalem as the Arab state's capital.
CBS co-host Jericka Duncan began the segment with a discussion of the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and asked why it is so "contentious" to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Although the movement for a two-state solution always assumed that the western part of Jerusalem would remain Israel's capital, Vick suggested that President Donald Trump had made such a plan impossible by relocating the embassy:
Jerusalem has been a disputed city for most of its existence, but the dispute now is between Israel and the Palestinian people. And if you're going to have a two-state solution -- both states have to have a capital -- the whole idea was always that they would share Jerusalem. Trump is saying it belongs to Israel.
A bit later, Duncan brought up Abbas and recalled that "The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called the relocation a slap in the face, even saying that Washington could no longer be considered an honest broker."
Vick responded by repeating without question the Palestinian Arab spin blaming Israel for a two-state agreement not being reached:
The idea was always that the U.S. could be the broker -- could take the interests of the Palestinians and balance them against the interests of Israel -- the idea being that both sides could trust. And this is what Abbas is saying, is like -- and he was put in place, in some ways, by the Americans, not a militant man, always a peacemaker. And he was never able to deliver because Israel wouldn't negotiate in good faith, according to the Palestinians.
Not mentioned was that supposed "peacemaker" Abbas and other Palestinian Authority officials have a history of praising terrorists after attacks against Israeli citizens.
