Itongadol.-US President Barack Obama said Wednesday he wants to ensure that efforts for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be kept alive beyond his presidency, as he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for likely the last time before he leaves the White House in January.
Speaking in front of the press before their meeting at a hotel in Manhattan, the two leaders broadcast an extremely friendly vibe, sweeping under the rug years of a famously testy relationship. The word “Iran,” a country whose nuclear program has been the source of considerable friction between them, was not mentioned once.
But along with the smiles, Obama indicated that in their private talks he would push Netanyahu on ways to get back to the negotiating table with the Palestinians and curbing settlement activity in the West Bank.
“We need to keep alive the idea of Israel as a secure country alongside a Palestinian state,” Obama said, adding that he would use the meeting to get a sense of Israel’s “opportunities and challenges over the next few years.”
Obama added that “we are concerned about settlement activity.”
Netanyahu told Obama that Israel “will never give up” on the goal of peace.
Obama said Netanyahu has “always been candid” with the US, likely referencing the long history of spats between Jerusalem and Washington over the past six years, including over the Iran nuclear deal and Israeli Palestinian peace.
Netanyahu opened his remarks by thanking Obama for a recent $38 billion defense aid package and talking up the strength of the Israel-US relationship.
“I don’t think people understand the length and breadth of this relationship,” he said.
He also invited Obama to visit Israel.
“I want you to know, Barack, that you will always be a welcome guest,” Netanyahu said, going on to invite the president to his private residence house in Caesarea.
“Let’s set up a tea time,” Obama replied.
Obama began his comments by wishing for a speedy recovery for former President Shimon Peres, 93, who suffered a major stroke last week.
The two, each flanked by a team of aides and diplomats, were holding the meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, where Netanyahu is slated to speak tomorrow.
Addressing the world body on Tuesday, Obama warned that “Israel must recognize that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land” — a message that the president, say his advisers, will reiterate to Netanyahu.
Wednesday’s pow-wow in midtown Manhattan’s posh Palace Hotel has been touted as likely the last face-to-face summit between the two leaders, capping six years of largely testy ties, during which the two have met an average of twice a year.
Some of their previous encounters were decidedly more frosty than Wednesday’s friendly display of mutual appreciation in front of the cameras, for instance in June 2009, when Obama surprised the Israeli leader with the call for a settlement freeze, or in May 2011 when Netanyahu appeared to lecture the president about Israel’s inability to return the pre-1967 lines.
The last time Obama and Netanyahu met was in November 2015, following the completion of the Iranian nuclear deal — another source of tension in the relationship — the two seemed particularly concerned with broadcasting a return to business-as-usual.
During that meeting, too, Obama raised the issue of Israel’s policies in the West Bank, but unlike in previous sessions he only did so privately, not during what has proven in multiple instances to be the awkwardly public press appearance either just before or just after their closed-door talks.Before Wednesday’s Manhattan meeting, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters that he was certain that Obama would raise the issue of “continued settlement activity, the potential viability of a Palestinian state in the face of that settlement activity.”
What Wednesday’s meeting will not include, however, is a new US peace plan.
Rhodes downplayed reports that the Obama administration was actively preparing a last-ditch effort to broker talks between Israel and the Palestinians. He stressed that “in terms of our own plans going forward, we don’t have plans for the president to pursue a new initiative at this point.”
In recent weeks, speculations have circled that the 10-year Memorandum of Understanding would serve as leverage to bring Israel back to the negotiations table. The New York Times reported that Obama was considering making a final push toward an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, offering the prospect that the US president would either start the ball rolling at the UN General Assembly or in November, after the US presidential elections were completed.
But although Obama criticized both Israel and the Palestinians in his annual speech before the world governing body, his Tuesday remarks did not propose any new guidelines for resolving the decades-old conflict.
Still, Rhodes did keep the possibility of action — and thus speculation — open. “I don’t want to suggest that we’ve never discussed different things that the president could do to move the ball forward,” he said. “But we’re not coming to this meeting tomorrow or moving forward in the coming weeks with a plan for the president to take a particular action on this issue.”
On Thursday, Netanyahu will address the United Nations General Assembly, where is expected to call on the civilized world to support Israel in its fight against terrorism. Shortly before the prime minister takes the podium, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will address the forum.