KUWAIT: US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday he would not let criticism of his Middle East peace efforts attributed to Israel’s defense minister deter him from trying to achieve a framework Israeli-Palestinian deal.

“We just can’t let one set of comments undermine that effort, and I don’t intend to,” Kerry told a news conference in Kuwait, where he was attending a donors’ conference for Syria.

Israel’s hawkish defense chief, Moshe Yaalon, was quoted by an Israeli newspaper on Tuesday as calling Kerry’s efforts “messianic,” and dismissing a US-proposed security plan for the occupied West Bank.

That drew a sharp rebuke from the White House and State Department. Yaalon later said in a statement that he “apologizes if the secretary was offended” by the reported remarks, stopping short of denying that he made them.

“Secretary of State John Kerry — who has come to us determined and is acting out of an incomprehensible obsession and a messianic feeling — cannot teach me a single thing about the conflict with the Palestinians,” Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, had quoted Yaalon as saying. “The only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel prize and leaves us alone,” he said, according to the report.