President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been sharply at odds over terms for Middle East peace ahead of a very anticipated Oval Office meeting today.
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were sharply at odds more than terms for Middle East peace ahead of a very anticipated Oval Office meeting right now.
In a speech Thursday on U.S. policy in the Mideast, Obama for the very first time endorsed the Palestinians' demand that their eventual state be depending on borders that existed prior to the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel forces occupied east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
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| Netanyahu, Obama to meet Monday Washington - Israeli |
From Jerusalem, Netanyahu dismissed the position as "indefensible," saying it would leave big Jewish settlements outside Israel. Then he boarded a plane for his long-scheduled check out to Washington, vowing to seek clarifications in his meeting with Obama in the White Home. He arrived in Washington early currently.
The encounter will pit a president deeply frustrated using a peace effort in shambles against an Israeli leader confronted by a Palestinian government he says he can't do business with. International pressure is expanding on each to solution the demands with the Palestinian men and women because the revolts sweeping the Arab globe crest against Israel itself. Palestinian protesters emboldened by the winds of change marched on the Jewish state's borders this week and a minimum of 15 individuals had been killed.
Against that backdrop, Obama is aiming "to try and convince Netanyahu along with the Israelis that there's a higher urgency in reaching agreement using the Palestinians due to the dramatic changes beneath way inside the area and better diplomatic pressures and efforts to isolate Israel and delegitimize its existence," stated Haim Malka, deputy director from the Middle East system at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"So he was speaking to both the Israelis and also the Palestinians and attempting to urge them to move forward and conveying a sense of urgency and danger in the status quo," Malka said.
Netanyahu's difficult response to Obama's speech "expresses disappointment at the absence of central products that Israel had demanded, mainly the (Palestinian) refugees," a senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not absolutely free to go over U.S. policy on the record, told reporters traveling with all the prime minister.
The official mentioned Netanyahu was disappointed the speech didn't address the Palestinian demand to repatriate to Israel millions of Palestinians, most descendants of people who had been driven from or fled households within the war over the Jewish state's 1948 creation.
"There is really a feeling that Washington will not fully grasp the reality, Washington will not fully grasp what we face," the official stated.
Obama's stance on the 1967 borders was not a significant policy change, since the U.S - in addition to the international community as well as past Israeli governments - previously endorsed an agreement developing on the 1967 lines.
Nonetheless it was the very first time he'd explicitly endorsed these borders as a beginning point, a position Netanyahu rejects. Obama stated Israel can never ever be a definitely peaceful Jewish state if it insists on "permanent occupation." But he did say the 1967 borders should be accompanied by land swaps agreed to by each sides, which could accommodate current Jewish settlements.
Obama was unsparing, as well, in his words for the Palestinian leadership, repudiating its pursuit of unilateral statehood by the United Nations and questioning its alliance with a Hamas faction bent on Israel's destruction. It was not quickly clear, however, no matter if Obama's statement on the 1967 borders because the basis for negotiations - one thing the Palestinians have extended sought - could 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 adjust in tactics from a president who has avoided imposing any U.S. program but is now running out of patience and causes to be subtle. Searching for to shake up a dynamic of mutual blame for the stalled peace talks, Obama pushed each sides to accept his beginning 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 procedure that never ever creates an outcome," the president mentioned Thursday in the State Department. "At a time when the persons with the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens from the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the conflict and resolves all claims is extra urgent than ever."
That does not mean resolution is anywhere in sight.
Ahead of his trip to Washington, Netanyahu delivered a speech to his parliament in which he produced clear his opposition to talks having a newly constituted Palestinian government that shares energy among the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction led by Mahmoud Abbas and the radical Hamas movement that rules Gaza. He also created a series of demands that the Palestinians - and specially Hamas - usually are not probably to meet. Amongst them were dropping their claim to east Jerusalem, their would-be capital, and recognizing Israel because the Jewish homeland.
Palestinians, for their element, refuse to negotiate even though Israel continues to expand Jewish enclaves inside the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians wish to be component of an eventual state. Israel refuses to freeze settlement construction, saying the matter should be resolved by means of negotiations.
With talks at a standstill, the Palestinians are planning to unilaterally take their bid for statehood towards the United Nations in September, a step Obama rejected Thursday, saying, "Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't make an independent state."
But Obama had no resolution to the question of Hamas, and no blueprint for ways to solve massive conflicts more than the status of Jerusalem along with the fate of Palestinian refugees. The border matter, he conceded, was just a start
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