Obama is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (neh-ten-YAH’-hoo) in NY. “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. He also raised USA concerns about Israeli settlements, a sore spot between the two leaders.
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Speaking to reporters Wednesday at the Manhattan hotel where they met, Netanyahu expressed warm thanks to the American people and its president for their aid and support, while Obama commented: “It is a very hard and risky time in the Middle East, and we want to make sure that Israel has the full capabilities it needs in order to keep the Israeli people safe”.
Relations between Netanyahu and the Obama White House have been strained over the Iran nuclear deal, among other issues; the disagreements came to a head previous year at the United Nations when Netanyahu invoked the Holocaust during his address to the General Assembly, dramatically inveighing against the “silence” of the global community, including Obama, in confronting Iran.
The president made only a passing reference to Israeli settlement construction as reporters were allowed in briefly for the start of their meeting. That could come in the form of a major speech or a U.S. -backed U.N. Security Council resolution – both moves that would increase pressure on Israel and that Netanyahu would be expected to oppose. And that was that. “And I believe that as soon as we have a new president, we should rescind that agreement and give one that is better for Israel and better for the United States”.
Netanyahu said he appreciated their many talks about the challenges facing his country.
“The settlements took up on a few minutes of the [roughly half-hour long] meeting, but they were still the subject that for the umpteenth time grabbed headlines”, Ravid writes.
The tense relationship between Obama and Netanyahu over the past eight years will probably increase pressure on the president’s successor to find a solution to the Israel-Palestine problem.
Wednesday’s encounter was the 17th between the prime minister and Obama since they both came to power in 2009.
Meanwhile, both Russian Federation and France have signalled an interest in taking on a larger role in mediating between Israelis and Palestinians. Netanyahu has led Israel for all but about the first two months of Obama’s almost eight years in office.
Obama and Netanyahu have often had a contentious relationship, the low point of which occurred in 2015 when Netanyahu, without informing the White House ahead of time, arranged a trip to Washington to tell Congress why Israel opposed the global agreement that the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran to curb Tehran’s nuclear weapons development.
Ties between the two leaders never fully recovered after Mr Netanyahu showed up on Capitol Hill to lobby Congress against Mr Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
The U.S. has also been dismayed at various times with Netanyahu’s comments suggesting he did not favor the two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
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