Secretary of State Kerry made an unhelpful, mistaken, ill-informed comment about the current wave of Palestinian violence yesterday when speaking at Harvard.

Here is the comment Kerry made:

So here’s the deal. What’s happening is that unless we get going, a two-state solution could conceivably be stolen from everybody. And there’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years. Now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing, and a frustration among Israelis who don’t see any movement.

Kerry does not know what he is talking about. There has simply not been “a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years.” There has been a steady growth in settlement population, though the bulk of that growth is in the major blocs–such as Ma’ale Adumim–that Israel will clearly retain in any final agreement. Kerry’s imprecision is another problem. Does he mean there has been a massive increase in the number of settlements? That’s flatly false. Does he mean a massive increase in settlement size, as existing settlements expand physically? That’s also flatly false. The so-called “peace map” or “Google Earth map” of the West Bank has changed very little.