| Date | Title |
|---|---|
| 21/05/2011 | Netanyahu Backs Down Obama Has His Way |
| 21/05/2011 | Netanyahu Speech Will He Take On Obama |
| 23/05/2011 | President Obama Controversial Statement On Israel |
Netanyahu Backs Down Obama Has His Way |
Israel is prepared to make "painful compromises" for peace with the Palestinians, including the handover of land they seek for a state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress on Tuesday. Addressing a joint meeting of Congress, a bastion of support for Israel, after a testy exchange last week with President Barack Obama over the contours of a future Palestine, Netanyahu reiterated his terms for peace. They included Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people and the scrapping of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' unity accord with the Islamist movement Hamas. "Tear up your pact with Hamas. Sit down and negotiate. Make peace with the Jewish state," he said. "I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historical peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility," the right-wing leader added, echoing a pledge he made in a speech to Israel's parliament on May 15. "Now this is not easy for me. It's not easy, because I recognize that in a genuine peace we will be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland," he said, referring to the occupied West Bank. Commenting on Netanyahu's Washington address, a spokesman for Abbas said the Israeli leader's vision for ending conflict with Palestinians put "more obstacles" in front of the Middle East peace process. "What came in Netanyahu's speech will not lead to peace," said the spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah, in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Settler leaders and members of Netanyahu's own Likud party voiced opposition last week to his hints of territorial compromise. But with Israeli-Palestinian peace talks currently frozen and no breakthrough in sight, his governing coalition did not appear to be in any jeopardy. IMPLIED ANNEXATION Though he implied in Congress that Israel would cede some Jewish settlements in the West Bank, he said others would be annexed in any future peace agreement. "This compromise must reflect the dramatic demographic changes that have occurred since 1967," he said, referring to Israel's construction of hundreds of settlements on land Palestinians want for a state. Repeating a message he has delivered consistently during his five-day visit to Washington, Netanyahu said "Israel will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967," narrow lines that existed before the West Bank was captured in a war 44 years ago. Obama drew Israeli anger when he said on Thursday a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip should largely be drawn along the pre-1967 frontiers. A frosty meeting with Netanyahu followed at the White House on Friday when the Israeli leader, with Obama sitting at his side, rejected those borders. On Sunday, Obama seemed to ease Israeli anger somewhat when he made clear Israel would likely be able to negotiate keeping some settlements as part of a land swap in any final deal with the Palestinians. Netanyahu was greeted warmly by congressional leaders and received frequent standing ovations. He was heckled once from the gallery by a woman who shouted "No more occupation -- end Israeli war crimes!" Legislators stood to applaud Netanyahu, to drown out further disruptions, and police hustled the woman out. Netanyahu repeated his long-standing demand that a future Palestine must be demilitarized and accept a long-term Israeli military presence along its eastern border on the Jordan River. He also called on Palestinians to see their future "homeland," rather than Israel, as the place to resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees. "It's time for (Palestinian) President Abbas to stand before his people and say, 'I will accept a Jewish state'," Netanyahu said to applause. "Those six words will change history. They will make it clear to the Palestinians that this conflict will come to an end," he said. "And those six words will convince the people of Israel that they have a true partner for peace." Netanyahu again voiced his opposition to a planned bid by the Palestinians to seek U.N. recognition of statehood in September in the absence of peace talks. "Peace cannot be imposed. It must be negotiated," he said. Goto Top |
Netanyahu Speech Will He Take On Obama? |
 Netanyahu has a mostly sympathetic ear in Congress, where few lawmakers in either party speak up for the Palestinians, hewing to decades of close U.S.-Israeli ties. But the Israeli prime minister has had a rocky relationship with President Barack Obama, and last week said the president's vision of a Palestinian state based on the borders of 1967 could leave Israel "indefensible." Obama articulated that vision on Thursday in a major policy speech on the Middle East. His position essentially embraced the Palestinians' view that the state they seek in the West Bank and Gaza should largely be drawn along lines that existed before the 1967 war in which Israel captured those territories and East Jerusalem. On Sunday Obama seemed to ease Israeli anger somewhat when he made clear that the Jewish state would likely be able to negotiate keeping some settlements as part of a land swap in any final deal with the Palestinians. Netanyahu voiced appreciation for those comments, and some analysts think Netanyahu will not further escalate the quarrel with Obama in his remarks to Congress on Tuesday. "Netanyahu will most likely try to tone down any perceived differences between his position and the president's, because his disagreements with President Obama have become counterproductive for both and ultimately undermine Israel's own interests," said Haim Malka, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But Republicans in Congress, including House leaders, are not about to drop their criticism of the Democratic president's newly articulated Mideast vision. House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that Obama's comments on Middle East borders left "most Americans ... just questioning what kind of strategy there is. It doesn't make sense to force a democratic ally of ours into negotiating with now a terrorist organization" about land swaps. Cantor was referring to a unity deal last month between Western-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement and Hamas, an Islamist group viewed by the United States as a terrorist organization. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch's office says he will introduce a resolution that it is not U.S. policy to have Israel's borders return to the boundaries of 1967. ISRAELIS SAY TO EXPECT SOME SURPRISES Israeli officials said they expected Netanyahu to deliver several "surprises" in his address to Congress on Tuesday, but they declined to elaborate, saying he would likely be working on a final draft up until the last minute. Speculation had been high in Israel that Netanyahu would offer new ideas on peacemaking to try to display flexibility and rally opposition to the Palestinians' plan to ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state in September. The official Israeli statement on Netanyahu's speech noted that he is "among the few world leaders, who include Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin, invited to address Congress for a second time." Netanyahu first addressed a joint meeting of Congress in 1996 during his first term as prime minister. Netanyahu will speak about recent changes in the Middle East, Iran and the principles for a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, the statement said. Peace talks are frozen, largely over the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Neither Obama nor Netanyahu have offered a concrete plan to try to revive them. IMPACT ON U.S. POLITICS Cantor said he believed most U.S. voters agreed with his criticism of Obama's Middle East policy. "Just responding to the pressure of the Palestinians, and some of their supporters around the world, is not leadership. That's not what people I think in this House and their constituents want to see out of our president." But Daniel Levy of the New America Foundation in Washington isn't so sure Obama will pay a political price for his comments about Middle East borders, even in the 2012 re-election campaign just ahead. "There is this perception that there is a huge political price to be paid (for upsetting Israel), which I don't think is borne out in reality," Levy said. He said Obama had done a good job blunting criticism with his clarifying comments on Sunday, which were made to Washington's most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "I don't think that the extreme positions taken by Congress on this issue -- which are really extreme, often more extreme than Israel's parliament itself -- I don't think they are reflective of American broader public opinion," Levy said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gets his chance Monday night to address the main U.S. Jewish lobby when he speaks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in the wake of U.S. President Barack Obama's remarks to the group the day before. Obama on Sunday sought to tamp down any controversy over his remarks last week that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should start from pre-1967 borders and include land swaps. The proposal, a longstanding formulation in peace talks that Obama for the first time expressed as official U.S. policy, was immediately rejected by Netanyahu as unrealistic and prompted criticism from political opponents back home. Now Netanyahu will have the final word on the issue, at least for now. He sounded more conciliatory toward Obama after the U.S. president sought to reassure the vital U.S. Jewish lobby on Sunday of his administration's commitment to Israel's security while also making clear his desire to kick-start the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at a time when the entire Middle East landscape is changing amid the so-called Arab Spring demonstrations. In the speech Sunday, Obama acknowledged that he expected some controversy from his call Thursday for negotiations to be based on border demarcations predating the six-day war of 1967, in which Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip and other territory. However, he said, his policy on the border issue "means that the parties themselves -- Israelis and Palestinians -- will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967," the eve of the war. Those negotiations will involve "mutually agreed-upon" land swaps to deal with changing conditions of recent decades, he said. "That's what mutually agreed-upon swaps means. It is a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation," Obama said to applause. "It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years," including the new demographic realities on the ground and the needs of both sides. His proposal contained "nothing particularly original," he said, adding that "this basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous U.S. administrations." "If there is a controversy, then it's not based in substance," Obama said. A statement by Netanyahu responding to Obama's AIPAC speech steered clear of specifics, saying: "I share the president's will to promote peace and I value his current and past efforts to achieve this goal." "I am determined to act together with President Obama in order to find ways to resume the negotiations for peace," said Netanyahu's statement Sunday. "Peace is a vital need for all of us." AIPAC is an important political ally in the United States because of its significant campaign donations and influence. Leaders from both parties including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, also are scheduled speakers Monday night. In his speech Sunday, Obama repeated a line from the Thursday address that the "status quo" in the Israel-Palestinian conflict is unsustainable. He listed a series of reasons why conditions on the ground dictated the need for a revitalized peace effort now. "First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories," Obama said. "This will make it harder and harder -- without a peace deal -- to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state." He also cited the increasing difficulty for Israel to defend itself against regional enemies, and the "new generation" of Arabs reshaping the entire region through the protest movement that already has toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt. "A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders. Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained," Obama said, adding that a growing regional and international impatience with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is leading some to look for other options, such as a U.N. resolution in September to recognize an independent Palestinian state. Even though such a U.N. General Assembly resolution would be nonbinding, Obama told the AIPAC meeting that the United States would oppose any effort to isolate Israel in international forums. He also repeated U.S. criticism of Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs the Gaza Strip and is considered a terrorist organization by Washington. Hamas and the other main Palestinian group, the Fatah party of Mahmoud Abbas that heads the governing authority in the West Bank, agreed on May 4 to work together to set up unifying elections in May 2012. Maen Areikat, the chief Palestinian representative to the United States, told on Sunday that Fatah would continue to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians until they can elect their own leaders and representatives next year. "Hopefully, come May 2012, the Palestinian people will be able to choose those people who are committed to negotiating a peaceful resolution with Israel," Areikat said, conceding that Hamas would be a voice in any Palestinian unity government that emerges from next year's vote. Obama said Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence and recognizes Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. The audience applauded loudly when Obama also called for Hamas to release Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured five years ago. In response, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told that the U.S. government has "a clear preference for Israel" at the expense of freedom for the Palestinian people and their right to establish a sovereign state. Goto Top |
| President Obama Controversial Statement On Israel President Barack Obama said Sunday that any controversy over his remarks last week that Israel-Palestinian negotiations should start from pre-1967 borders and include land swaps was "not based in substance."In his first speech as president to the main American-Israeli advocacy group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama sought to reassure the vital U.S. Jewish lobby of his administration's commitment to Israel's security while also making clear his desire to kick-start the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at a time when the entire Middle East landscape is changing amid the so-called Arab Spring demonstrations. Obama acknowledged that he expected some controversy from his call last Thursday for negotiations to be based on border demarcations from before the six-day war of 1967, in which Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip and other territory. However, he said, his policy on the border issue "means that the parties themselves -- Israelis and Palestinians -- will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967," the eve of the war. Those negotiations will involve "mutually agreed-upon" land swaps to deal with changing conditions of recent decades, he said. Read More And Watch the Speech |
