Can’t say I’m all that surprised considering Obama’s feelings toward Israel.

Via Politico:

President Barack Obama agrees with the Secretary of State John Kerry, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney suggested Wednesday: the word “apartheid” was wrong, but the underlying sentiment that Kerry was trying to express wasn’t.

Carney was asked at Wednesday’s White House press briefing about Kerry’s comments at a recent event assessing the future of the peace process, which exploded after a tape of them was posted on the Daily Beast over the weekend.

“The overall point that we have made as a matter of policy, that Secretary Kerry makes, that President Obama makes, that [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu makes, is the desired outcome here is a two-state solution in which there is a sovereign Palestinian state and a democratic, Jewish state of Israel that is secure and safe,” Carney said.

Including the word “democratic” as part of what would be entailed by two-state solution could be read as pointing to the outcome that Kerry was trying to warn against when he said “a unitary state winds up being either an apartheid state with second class citizens, or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state.”

Kerry issued a statement Monday evening saying he wished he could “rewind the tape” and choose a different word — but not backing away from his analysis, which tracks with comments made by Israeli leaders about the unclear future if a deal isn’t eventually struck to create two separate countries and Israelis resist granting full citizenship rights to Palestinians.