Later this week, Secretary of State John Kerry is going to Israel to follow up on so-called “peace talks.”

“We and the parties remain focused on our goal of achieving a permanent agreement which ends the conflict and all claims, and creates peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” the State Department said last week.

Peace eh? Juan Cole provides a round-up of recent Israeli actions to help illustrate how the government of Benjamin Netanyahu understands “peace” with the Palestinians:

That’s a hell of a lot of peace-makin. Everything listed above quite deliberately undermines the prospects for a viable Palestinian state, which is supposedly what negotiations are based upon.

The only thing on the list that has received any media attention at all is the newest plans for settlement construction, which are illegal. Settlement construction rose by 70 percent in 2013. In the process, Israel destroyed more than 500 Palestinian homes in West Bank and East Jerusalem, displacing 862 people.

Netanyahu’s reaction to the complaints? In a Likud party meeting on Sunday, Bibi said “the Palestinians knew we would build in the course of the negotiations” and they are just seeking to create “an artificial crisis.”

All the U.S. has had to say is that they don’t think settlements “create a positive environment for negotiations.” Never mind them being illegal and never mind the fact that continued U.S. support for Israel is what enables these flagrant violations of international law in the first place.

Everything Israel carries out in occupied Palestinian territory demonstrates clearly that they intend to annex the West Bank and rob Palestinians of what fraction of their own land they still have left.

According to the New Republic, Netanyahu’s Deputy Minister of Defense Danny Danon said of the West Bank “We have rights to the land.”

“We won,” he explained. “When you win, you keep what you won.”

While all that goes on, the U.S. and Israel continue to utter the word “peace.”