Ambassador criticizes Israeli 'settlement growth'

The United States ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, spoke at the Haaretz Conference in New York on Sunday, where she criticized Israel for "continued settlement growth" and urged both Israelis and Palestinians to renew peace efforts.
Power said the bias against Israel at the UN persists, and blasted what she called the "absurdity" of Israel being the only country with a standing item on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council - "not Syria, which gasses its citizens."
The remarks are hardly surprising, as the United States' official position for quite some time has been that Israel and the Palestinian Authority work towards a "two-state solution" to end the conflict between them, though officials in the Obama administration recently admitted  that reaching this solution before Obama's term expires is unlikely.
Last week at the Saban Forum, Secretary of State John Kerry lashed out at Israel , saying that current trends in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are leading to a "one-state solution" and warning that if that were to happen, Israel would risk no longer being a Jewish and democratic state.