(JNS.org) After meeting with Jordanian and Arab League officials in Amman on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stressed that the ministers he met with told to him that the “core issue of instability” in the Middle East is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The remark comes amid the recent fall of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi’s regime in Egypt, and the continued turmoil of the Syrian civil war.

“Peace is in the common interest of everybody in this region,” Kerry said. “And as many ministers said to me today in the meeting that we had – many of them – they said that the core issue of instability in this region and in many other parts of the world is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Kerry has drawn concern for his focus on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, which his critics say is a relatively stable situation compared to ongoing upheaval in the rest of the region. “The fact that the administration, represented by the Secretary of State, has chosen to be preoccupied with the Palestinian issue proves that they have ignored a fundamental principle. If you are smothered by lethal sandstorms, don’t be preoccupied with the tumbleweeds,” Amb. Yoram Ettinger, former Minister of Congressional Affairs in Israel’s Embassy to the U.S., recently told JNS.org.