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‘We can’t go back’:
Israeli PM rejects 1967 border proposal
Face to face, Netanyahu says Obama vision for Mideast peace unrealistic
5/20/2011
WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly told
President Barack Obama on Friday his vision of how to achieve Middle
East peace was unrealistic, exposing a deep divide that could doom any
U.S. bid to revive peace talks.
In an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel’s closest ally, Netanyahu
insisted Israel would never pull back to its 1967 borders — which would
mean big concessions of occupied land — that Obama had said should be
the basis for negotiations on creating a Palestinian state.
“Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle
East reality,” an unsmiling Netanyahu said as Obama listened intently
beside him in the Oval Office after they met for talks.
Although the two leaders found cordial and predictable agreement on the
other central element that Obama outlined in his Mideast address
Thursday — ironclad Israeli security alongside a Palestinian nation —
progress on the bedrock issue of borders seemed as elusive as ever.
Netanyahu’s resistance raises the question of how hard Obama will push
for concessions he is unlikely to get, and whether the vision the U.S.
leader laid out on Thursday to resolve the decades-old conflict will
ever get off the ground.
Despite assurances of friendship by both leaders, this week’s events
also appeared to herald tense months ahead for U.S.-Israeli relations,
even as the Arab world goes through political tumult and Palestinians
prepare a unilateral bid this fall to seek U.N. General Assembly
recognition for statehood.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Obama said he reiterated to
Netanyahu the peace “principles” he offered on Thursday in a policy
speech on the Middle East upheaval.
The goal, he said, “has to be a secure Israeli state, a Jewish state,
living side by side in peace and security with a contiguous,
functioning and effective Palestinian state.
Obama on Thursday embraced a long-sought goal by the Palestinians: that
the state they seek in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip should
largely be drawn along lines that existed before the 1967 war in which
Israel captured those territories and East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu, who heads a right-leaning coalition, responded with what
amounted to a history lecture about the vulnerability to attack that
Israel faced with the old borders. “We can’t go back to those
indefensible lines,” he said.
Picking a fight with Israel could be politically risky for Obama at
home as he seeks re-election in 2012.
The brewing crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations dimmed even further the
prospect for resuming peace talks that collapsed late last year when
Palestinians walked away in a dispute over Israeli settlement building
in the West Bank.
Obama and Netanyahu, meanwhile, appear to have reached an impasse after
two and a half years of rocky relations. The Obama White House was
angered when Netanyahu refused a U.S. demand to halt building Jewish
settlements in the West Bank.
Some Israelis have never felt entirely comfortable with Obama, unnerved
by his early attempts to reach out to Iran and his support for popular
Arab revolutions that have unsettled Israel.
In a pointed comment clearly aimed at Obama’s new approach to the
long-running conflict, Netanyahu said: “The only peace that will endure
is one that is based on reality, on unshakable facts.”
Netanyahu, Israeli officials said, was determined to push back hard
because the reference to 1967 borders was a red flag that would attract
more international pressure on Israel for concessions. A senior Israeli
official said Netanyahu felt he had to speak bluntly so he would be
“heard around the world.”
“There is a feeling that Washington does not understand the reality,
doesn’t understand what we face,” an official on board the plane taking
Netanyahu to Washington told reporters.
Despite that, Obama’s first declaration of his stance on the contested
issue of borders could help ease doubts in the Arab world about his
commitment to acting as an even-handed broker and boost his outreach to
the region. Another failed peace effort, however, could fuel further
frustration.
In line with Netanyahu’s stance, Obama voiced opposition to the
Palestinian plan to seek U.N. recognition of statehood in September in
the absence of renewed peace talks.
The Democratic president has quickly come under fire from Republican
critics, who accuse him of betraying Israel, the closest U.S. ally in
the region. Pushing Netanyahu could alienate U.S. supporters of Israel
as Obama seeks re-election.
Obama may get a chilly reception in a speech to an influential
pro-Israel lobbying group on Sunday. Netanyahu is expected to be feted
when he addresses the same audience on Monday and then the U.S.
Congress on Tuesday.
Obama, in his speech on Thursday, laid down his clearest markers yet on
the compromises he believes Israel and the Palestinians must make to
resolve a conflict that has long been seen as a source of Middle East
tension.
But he did not present a formal U.S. peace plan or any timetable for a
deal he once promised to clinch by September.
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