Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday he shared Mr. Obama’s vision for peace in remarks appeared aimed at defusing a deepening row with the United States. Many American have said that the Israeli prime minister’s behavior toward the US president had been petulant and churlish.
Responding to President Obama’s efforts to ease tensions with Israel in a speech to a pro-Israel lobby group, over policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the US leader presented last week, Mr. Netanyahu issued a statement saying:
“I am a partner to President Obama’s wish to promote peace and I appreciate his efforts in the past and present to achieve this goal. I am determined to work with President Obama to find ways to renew peace talks.”
Speaking to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Sunday morning, President Obama forcefully defended his call for an Israeli-Palestinian peace based on their pre-1967 frontiers, suggesting critics had misrepresented his policy.
In a dramatic Oval Office appearance on Friday, Mr. Netanyahu emphatically rejected President Obama’s earlier call on Thursday, saying those borders would make Israel militarily indefensible and he then proceeded to lecture the American president. Veteran practitioners of diplomacy said that, at the very least, Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks constituted an egregious breach of protocol.
This time, Mr. Netanyahu made no mention of the 1967 borders. Instead, his office said: “Netanyahu expressed his appreciation for the words of President Obama at AIPAC.”
King Abdullah II of Jordan, meanwhile, said Israel keeps finding excuses not to negotiate with the Palestinian leadership and suggested the region may face another war if Israel doesn’t more fully engage in peace talks.
“I wish that our Israeli colleagues would, you know, pick one argument and bloody well stick to it,” King Abdullah said on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour on Sunday.
He criticized Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for ruling out negotiations with a recently unified Palestinian leadership that includes the militant Islamic group Hamas, after previously refusing to negotiate because Palestinian leaders were divided. Both Israel and the US government consider Hamas, which governs the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, a terrorist organization.
In his speech to AIPAC, President Obama also denounced the Palestinian reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah.
“The recent agreement between Fatah and Hamas poses an enormous obstacle to peace. No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction. We will continue to demand that Hamas accept the basic responsibilities of peace: recognizing Israel’s right to exist, rejecting violence, and adhering to all existing agreements,” Mr. Obama said.
(Mustapha Ajbaili, an editor at Al Arabiya
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