U.S. officials blamed Israel’s “expropriating land on a large scale” to build colonies “on the territory meant for that [Palestinian] state” as the “primary” reason for the recent negotiations’ failure, in a must-read Ynet interview with historic implications. This rare moment of honesty from anonymous officials of the dishonest broker stands in sharp contrast to the collapse of the Barak/Arafat Camp David talks, following which Israel’s apologists seized on the Clinton administration’s blaming of Arafat to disseminate the Myth of the Generous Offer.

Finally, for the first time in the history of the U.S. being Israel’s lawyer, the superpower has copped to one of the fundamental flaws of the peace process: one cannot negotiate over a pizza with a bully while the bully devours the pizza! “What they told me is the closest thing to an official American version of what happened,” writes Nahum Barnea. Put more plainly, indigenous people who are being oppressed by a colonial power cannot negotiate with the colonial power while the colonial power continues to steal, ethnically cleanse, and colonize their land.

“Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that this is also about expropriating land on a large scale,”

A credulous U.S. official complained, going much farther than any comment Sec. Kerry has made either on or off the record. Apparently the unnamed officials haven’t been reading Electronic Intifada, Haaretz, +972mag, our site, or any of the other publications that might have informed them of this reality long ago.

“I guess we need another Intifada to create the circumstances that would allow progress,”

One anonymous official asserted, clarifying that while they don’t want that to happen, the lack of a ‘sense of urgency’ necessitates one. Perhaps a way to interpret this comment is the recognition that the current balance of power so drastically favors Israel, that only if the state came under extreme pressure — for example, through a massive popular uprising (let’s think Intifada I, which was largely nonviolent) and a huge increase in international support for the BDS Movement — would Israel make the concessions necessary for negotiations to lead anywhere meaningful.

Of course, never did the unnamed U.S. officials speculate that cutting U.S. military aid to Israel might help create a ‘sense of urgency,’ nor did the U.S. officials acknowledge their own role as a dishonest broker being one of the main causes of the talks’ failure.

If indeed April 29th 2014 marked the end of the 20-year-long period of the U.S. inserting itself as the sole mediator of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the charge that settlement construction ‘very effectively sabotaged’ this round of talks will, in historical retrospective, indict Israel’s responsibility for the collapse of the entire ‘Peace Process’ and the Oslo era, which for 20 years has been nothing more than a smokescreen for Israel to confiscate more Pieces of Palestinian land.

U.S. officials also offered several strident warnings to the Israeli audience.

“The world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation. The occupation threatens Israel’s status in the world and threatens Israel as a Jewish state,” one of the unnamed senior officials implored.

In response to the interviewer’s tired rejoinder, “The world is being self-righteous. It closes its eyes to China’s takeover of Tibet,” the officials responded, “Israel is not China. It was founded by a UN resolution. Its prosperity depends on the way it is viewed by the international community.”

The officials might have added that Israel’s admission into the UN was contingent on its implementation of the right of Palestinian refugees’ return to their homes, which it has flagrantly ignored and violated.

Eyebrow-raising excerpts follow. Read the entirety of this landmark article, now; I wouldn’t be surprised if Israeli gov’t officials attempt to pressure Ynet to reword or even scrub this article, containing as it does perhaps the most strident U.S. criticism of Israeli policies of in many years. Also check out Larry Derfner’s take at +972.