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| Obama and Netanyahoo during Press conference |
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu suggested Friday that President Obama holds an unrealistic view of how to achieve peace in the Middle East, saying that Israel would never pull back to the boundaries that the American president said a day earlier must be the basis for negotiations.
The unusual Oval Office exchange, following a nearly two-hour meeting, laid bare the fundamental differences between Obama and the hawkish leader of the chief U.S. ally in the Middle East. Republicans on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, injected partisan politics into the debate by vowing to formally condemn Obama’s position toward Israel in a resolution next week.
Obama and Netanyahu are allies only by tradition, and their relationship lacks personal warmth and is tested often by their differing political views. As they acknowledged their divisions in an appearance before reporters at the White House, it was clear that the split would not be easily resolved at a time when the Middle East and North Africa are undergoing historic political change.
Netanyahu, in a lecturing tone, then ruled out an Israeli withdrawal to the nation’s boundaries on the eve of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which ended with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and other territories under Israel’s control.
Only a day earlier, Obama called for those 1967 lines to be the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations over final borders, adding that negotiated land swaps would also be needed.
His predecessor, George W. Bush, had called Israel’s withdrawal to those lines “unrealistic,” given the large Israeli settlements that have been built in the West Bank over more than four decades of occupation.
Israel is prepared to make "generous" concessions for peace in the Middle East, but cannot go back to the country's "indefensible" 1967 borders, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said after White House talks with Barack Obama.
Netanyahu's comments came after Obama, the US president, had said the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps, should form the basis for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, in a major speech on the Middle East on Thursday.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmud Abbas, responded to the statements, calling on Obama to further press Israel to accept a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.
In statements made after their talks, both Obama and Netanyahu rejected the involvement of Hamas in peace negotiations, following the recent Palestinian unity deal involving the group and Abbas' Fatah faction.
Netanyahu said that Abbas would have to choose between "peace with Israel and his pact with Hamas".
He also called Hamas the "Palestinian version of al-Qaeda".
But Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas spokesperson, responded telling Al Jazeera: "Hamas is not a terrorist organisation."
"We've spent 20 years in negotiations. It is enough. It is enough for the Palestinians... Hamas is fighting for our people, for our homeland, for our liberation, for our dignity, for our independence."
He also said that while a successful peace process remained to be seen: "We cannot give Israel the carte blanch that they have to enjoy the occupation... and to say we have to stop the resistance against the occupation."
