He thanked Obama for the recent US agreement on a 10-year, $38 billion military assistance package for Israel, the biggest military aid pact for a foreign country ever agreed to by Washington.
Advertisement
Yet his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes as Obama openly weighs using the final stretch of his presidency to ramp up pressure on the Israeli leader finally make peace with the Palestinians.
President Obama is calling for a “two-state solution” to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meaning that he would like to see both nations settle the conflict as independent countries, each claiming some of the land in dispute.
While the Palestinian issue featured prominently in Obama’s remarks, the other major area of their disagreement – Iran, and the nuclear deal that Obama so championed – was conspicuous by its absence from their public comments.
The senators insisted that Netanyahu was forced into signing because Israel’s arch-enemy Iran is growing stronger as it obtains billions of dollars unfrozen under an worldwide nuclear agreement reached previous year.
Some analysts have speculated that Obama would make one last push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before he leaves office, but White House officials this week discounted such speculation.
The United States and Israel inked an agreement last week worth 38 billion dollars in military aid over the next decade, sealing Israel’s status as the leading recipient of USA foreign military aid.
Yet that point of agreement, reached after arduous negotiations, only partially masks the underlying tensions between the two governments – most notably over Israel’s posture toward the Palestinians and continued expansion of settlements in occupied territories.
In their talks, Obama said he and his Israeli counterpart would discuss challenges in Syria, and said he would get Netanyahu’s assessment of conditions in Israel and the West Bank. Yes, that’s actually one of Obama’s stated foreign-policy goals: He told Jewish leaders in 2009 that it was time to put “daylight” between the two countries.
He complimented Obama on “what I hear is a terrific golf game”.
“Replacing a two-state solution with a one-state construct would spell doom: denying Palestinians their freedom and rightful future, and pushing Israel further from its vision of a Jewish democracy towards greater global isolation”, Ban told the United Nations.
American president Barack Obama, meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own critics who insinuate that he is anti-Israel.
Netanyahu pushed back on Obama’s characterization of the matter.
Even as the US continues to voice its opposition to the West Bank settlements, Israel has demanded tighter Palestinian security to crack down on militants responsible for a raft of stabbings and shootings against Israelis in recent months. And only a cynic would have detected a hint of pleasure from Netanyahu in his invitation to the soon-to-be ex-president to go play golf in Caesarea.
Israel has long relied on U.S. vetoes to avoid criticism at the Security Council for its many misdeeds in the occupied territories, and despite the suggestion that Obama is uncooperative, he’s vetoed everything, just like other presidents have. They say a relative of the girl was killed in the same place past year while allegedly trying to stab soldiers.
Advertisement
“Hillary Clinton is likely to make a push for greater Israel-Palestinian coexistence even if it can not solve the whole conflict”, Makovsky said.
