Israeli PM: ‘No going back’ to 1967 borders
Obama had called on Israel to be willing to do just that in a speech the day earlier.
The Israeli leader stated he would make some concessions but Israel would not go back to the lines from decades earlier because they are “indefensible.”
Obama listened with a strained look on his face.
For his part, Obama stated there were differences of formulations and language but stated such disputes are going to happen “between friends.”
The president never mentioned the 1967 borders in his comments to reporters.
The two men spoke to the press after a lengthy meeting at the White House. Obama stated in his speech on Thursday that the United States supports creation of a Palestinian state, with speaks based on the border lines that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel forces occupied east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Obama’s speech deeply angered Israel.
“We value your efforts to advance the peace process,” Netanyahu stated after the meeting. “Israel wants peace, I want peace. … We want a peace that will endure. … For there to be peace, Palestinians cannot anticipate Israel to go back to the 1967 lines.”
“We cannot go back to the lines. … I discussed this with the president.”
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But there was no sign of resolution of the many barriers that stand between Israel and the Palestinians, more now than last September when Obama brought the two parties together to call for a peace deal within a year — a deadline that now looks all but unattainable.
Netanyahu stated his nation could not negotiate with a newly constituted Palestinian unity government that includes the radical Hamas movement, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
He stated that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had to select between continuing the deal with Hamas and making peace with Israel.
Obama concurred that Hamas “is not a partner for a significant realistic peace process” and stated Palestinians would have to resolve that issue among themselves.
Yet both Obama and Netanyahu emphasized a need to make some kind of progress, against all obstacles, as changes sweep the Arab world.
“History will not give the Jewish people another chance,” Netanyahu said.
Palestinian protesters emboldened by the winds of change marched on the Jewish state’s borders this week and at least 15 people were killed.
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Against that backdrop, Obama was aiming “to try to convince Netanyahu and the Israelis that there is a greater urgency in reaching agreement with the Palestinians because of the dramatic changes under way in the region and greater diplomatic pressures and efforts to isolate Israel and delegitimize its existence,” stated Haim Malka, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“So he was talking to both the Israelis and the Palestinians and trying to urge them to move forward and conveying a sense of urgency and risk in the status quo,” Malka said.
Obama’s stance on the 1967 borders was not a major policy change, since the U.S. — along with the international community and even past Israeli governments — previously endorsed an agreement building on the 1967 lines.
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But it was the first time he had explicitly endorsed those borders as a starting point, a position Netanyahu rejects. Obama stated Israel can never be a truly peaceful Jewish say if it insists on “permanent occupation.” But he did say the 1967 borders should be accompanied by land swaps concurred to by both sides, which could accommodate existing Jewish settlements.
Obama was unsparing, too, in his words for the Palestinian leadership, repudiating its pursuit of unilateral statehood through the United Nations and questioning its alliance with a Hamas faction bent on Israel’s destruction. It was not immediately clear, however, whether Obama’s statement on the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations — something the Palestinians have long sought — would be sufficient to persuade the Palestinians to drop their quest for U.N. recognition.
Obama’s blunt attempt to steer the peace effort was a major change in tactics from a president who has avoided imposing any U.S. plan but is now running out of patience and reasons to be subtle. Seeking to shake up a dynamic of mutual blame for the stalled peace talks, Obama pushed both sides to accept his starting point — borders for Palestine, security for Israel — and get back to solving a stalemate “that has grinded on and on and on.”
“The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome,” the president stated Thursday at the State Department. “At a time when the people of the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the conflict and resolves all claims is more urgent than ever.”
That doesn’t mean resolution is anywhere in sight.
Settlement buildingAhead of his trip to Washington, Netanyahu delivered a speech to his parliament in which he made clear his opposition to speaks with a newly constituted Palestinian government that shares power between the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction led by Mahmoud Abbas and the radical Hamas movement that rules Gaza. He also made a series of demands that the Palestinians — and especially Hamas — are not likely to meet. Among them were dropping their claim to east Jerusalem, their would-be capital, and recognizing Israel as the Jewish homeland.
Palestinians, for their part, refuse to negotiate while Israel continues to expand Jewish enclaves in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to be part of an eventual state. Israel refuses to freeze settlement construction, saying the matter should be resolved through negotiations.
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Palestinian officials Friday condemned an Israeli plan to build 1,550 housing units on annexed land around Jerusalem, authorized the day Netanyahu left for the speaks in Washington.
An Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman stated a planning committee had approved two building projects in Pisgat Zeev and Har Homa. These urban settlements were built on land that Israel annexed after the 1967 war that it sees as Jerusalem neighborhoods. She did not say when construction was expected to start.
Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, stated the Israeli move further hampered U.S. efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which collapsed last year shortly after they began because of settlement building.
“When the whole world and U.S. President Barack Obama are working to revive the negotiations and the peace process, the Israeli government is determined to undermine and sabotage these efforts,” Erekat said.
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With speaks at a standstill, the Palestinians are planning to unilaterally take their bid for statehood to the United Nations in September, a step Obama rejected Thursday, saying, “Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September will not create an independent state.”
But Obama had no solution to the question of Hamas, and no blueprint for how to solve enormous conflicts over the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. The border issue, he conceded, was just a start.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
source : www.msnbc.msn.com
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