Wrapping up his last day of his final trip to the U.N.as president, Barack Obama reaffirmed America’s commitment to Israel Wednesday in a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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The bilateral meeting in NY on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, likely the last between the leaders while Obama is in the White House, came amid soured relations between the countries following the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015.
The United States this month pledged to give Israel as much as $3.8 billion a year over 10 years, which White House officials described as the largest foreign assistance package in US history. This news story is related to Latest/151633-Obama-tells-Netanyahu-of-US-concern-on-settlements-urges-peace/ – breaking news, latest news, pakistan ne.
“Surely, Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel, but Israel recognizes that it can not permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land”, Obama said in his lone direct reference to the conflict during the 48-minute speech.
Obama gave short shrift to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his final U.N. General Assembly speech Tuesday, saying only, “Surely, Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel, but Israel recognizes that it can not permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land”.
The United States has objected to continuing Israeli settlement activity in Arab lands, which Obama sees as making an permanent peace agreement all the more hard. We’ll never know if putting real pressure on Israel would have worked, because Obama – like every other president before him, with the single and short-lived example of George H.W. Bush – was never willing to push Israel past its comfort zone.
President Barack Obama has asserted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be settled by a two-state solution.
Then in January 2001, just before leaving office, Bill Clinton brought together Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in a failed bid to make peace and laid down his own “parameters” for a solution.
At the start of his remarks, Natanyahu thanked the United States for signing a military aid package earlier this month to provide Israel with almost $40 billion over the next decade.
Mr Netanyahu challenged that notion, said one official, adding that the two leaders had not “papered over” their differences. “It’s very likely that the former president will return to our region in order to fix what he screwed up on his watch”, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bismuth says.
“With respect to Middle East peace, I wouldn’t rule out the President taking any particular step on the issue”, Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said Tuesday.
Obama and Netanyahu came to power at the same time in 2009 and have had several spats over the years.
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Hameid told reporters that Israeli security forces, with the support of the Israeli government, have been carrying out an “ethnic cleansing” campaign against unarmed Palestinian citizens, adding that “Israel’s escalation of violence and executions is exacerbating the situation in Hebron to the brink of disaster”.
