Obama-Netanyahu Washington meeting reveals key differences over solution to Palestinian issue

Israel balks at showdown with U.S., Congress questions Netanyahu over reservations, projects

Obama warns Netanyahu against surprise Iran strike

Abu Mazen: Israel tried to erase our national identity but we're here to stay

Cairo's Palestinian dialogue postponed, Fayyad forms govt.

President Barack Obama on Monday opened his deepest foray into the Middle East quagmire, telling Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu he must stop Jewish settlements and should grasp a "historic opportunity" to make peace with the Palestinians.

Obama also had pointed words for Iran on a second major Mideast dispute, warning the Iranians they had until year's end to get serious about talks with the world community on curbing their nuclear ambitions. "We're not going to have talks forever," the president said.

Obama and Netanyahu spoke highly of their hopes for progress in the Mideast after a lengthy private meeting in the Israeli's first visit to the White House since Obama became president and Netanyahu began his second stint as prime minister. Yet the new president was firm in insisting the Israelis move toward peace with the Palestinians, and Netanyahu stuck to his stance that Israel cannot negotiate with people who deny its right to exist.

The two leaders found fruitful grounds for agreement on Iran.

Israel is deeply concerned about Iran's perceived attempts to build a nuclear weapon, believing the virulently anti-Israeli regime might naturally target the Jewish state the lies in easy range of Tehran's missile technology.

Beyond that, the Iranians have been a key sponsor of anti-Israeli Islamic militants who refuse — as does Tehran — to accept Israel's existence. Most dangerously, the Iranian-funded and armed Hamas organization currently runs the Gaza Strip, while Hezbollah, the other Iranian proxy, has historically harassed Israel with rocket attacks from Lebanon on the north.

The Bush administration diplomatically bludgeoned Iran over its nuclear efforts but refused to formally engage the Islamic government in Tehran. Obama, deeply concerned that a nuclear-armed Iran could spark an arms race in the Middle East and deepen the threat to Israeli security, has changed course and seeks to engage the Iranians in direct talks.

So far there has been no positive Iranian response. Obama said he assumed the country's leadership was distracted with its presidential election campaign but thought he would be able to gauge Iranian seriousness in the coming months.

"We should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether they are moving in the right direction and whether the parties involved are making progress and that there's a good-faith effort to resolve differences," the president said.

Iran insists its nuclear program is intended solely for civilian electricity generation.

With Netanyahu at his side, Obama said he had told the new Israeli leader during more than two-hours of talks that his government must move quickly to resume peace talks with the Palestinians and had insisted negotiations start from a previous agreement on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We have seen progress stalled on this front, and I suggested to the prime minister that he has a historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure," Obama said. "That means that all the parties involved have to take seriously obligations that they have previously agreed to."

Obama told reporters that serious negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians would be possible only if Netanyahu ordered an end to the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, land that would make up the Palestinian state along with the Gaza Strip.

"There is a clear understanding that we have to make progress on settlements; that settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward," Obama said, referring to past negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Netanyahu said he was ready to resume peace talks with the Palestinians immediately but he also said any agreement depended on their acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. It was not immediately clear in the way he phrased the response whether Netanyahu was demanding that as a precondition for talks.

"There's never been a time when Arabs and Israelis see a common threat the way we see it today," Netanyahu said, speaking of a sense of urgency felt throughout the Arab world about Iran's nuclear program.

The Israeli leader did not respond publicly to Obama's demand on an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and refused again to say he was ready to negotiate a so-called two-state solution to the nearly 60-year dispute with the Palestinians. The plan, endorsed by the United States and other parties pushing for peace between the historic foes, calls for establishment of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel.

Palestinians offered praise for Obama but expressed disappointment with Netanyahu's remarks.

Netanyahu "did not mention a commitment to a two-state solution, and we need to see American action against this policy," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who visits the White House on May 28.

Saeb Erekat, the top Palestinian negotiator, issued a similar assessment:

"Mr. Netanyahu failed to mention the two-state solution, signed agreements and the commitment to stop settlement activity. He said he wants the Palestinians to govern themselves. The question to Mr. Netanyahu is, 'How can I govern myself while your occupation continues everywhere in the West Bank and Gaza, and how can I govern myself under your wall, roadblocks and settlement activities?'"

Meanwhile, U.S. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Senior Fellow Steven A. Cook says U.S. Obama and Netanyahu wanted to project "a friendly partnership" in their White House meeting but appear to remain divided on core issues -- a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis and how to confront Iran. He says Obama and Netanyahu are far apart on whether to press for a two-state solution, with the current Israeli leadership not able to move past the vision of "some kind of notional Palestinian entity."

On Iran, Cook says Netanyahu is driven by the view that time is running out on Iran's ability to make nuclear weapons while Obama is willing to prod the Iranians into a dialogue and wait until the end of the year to assess the progress, and then to consider tougher sanctions.

Neither President Obama nor Prime Minister Netanyahu have an interest in projecting anything but a friendly partnership. The president is quite popular at home and abroad and it's clearly not in Prime Minister Netanyahu's interest to be seemingly at odds with President Obama due to the fact that Israelis consider the U.S.-Israel relationship to be one of those existential issues. President Obama doesn't seem to be someone who wants to get things done through confrontation but rather through co-opting people and bringing them along with his vision. There doesn't seem to be a meeting of the minds.

There tends not to be an appreciation of the political pressures that Prime Minister Netanyahu confronts in Israel. Unless he wants to have a revolt within his own party and own coalition, it's probably not in his interest to come right out of the gate and talk about a two-state solution. At the same time though, his advisers and people he's known to be close to articulate a vision that is essentially a non-starter for the Palestinians. It's some kind of notional Palestinian entity. Once again, it is not defined as a state: this entity would not be able to sign treaties with other countries, would not have control of its own airspace, and would not have control of its own radio spectrum.

He said also that the Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, something that the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has declined to do.

Such a declaration doesn't seem to be too heavy of a lift from the perspective of the people in the United States and elsewhere, but of course 20 percent of Israel's population is non-Jewish, which is why there's significant Palestinian and Arab reluctance to recognize Israel specifically and only as a Jewish state.

On Iran, there are a lot of subtle differences even though both leaders were talking in a friendly way. The Israelis have been urging a deadline on any discussions with Iran about halting its nuclear program. Obama did not seem to be too interested in a deadline, but he said that we ought to have a pretty good idea by the end of the year on where these talks are going.

The Israelis have often said that the Iranians are going to have nuclear weapons in two years and time's running out.

At the same time, they've consistently accommodated those timelines slipping. Again, there's an issue of Netanyahu's domestic political constraints that are at issue here. The Obama administration is taking the issue of negotiations or engagement with the Iranians very seriously, and putting a very specific timeline on this would be the best way to undermine those negotiations. In an effort to keep it open ended without placing demands on the Iranians, the United States clearly sees this as a way of bringing the Iranians to the table rather than creating a situation where the Iranians do nothing other than dig in their heels.

The Israeli position is essentially suggesting that in order to have progress on the Palestinian front something needs to be done about the Iranian issue, specifically the nuclear issue.

The United States sees the linkage in the other direction: the Palestinian issue provides opportunity for the Iranians to meddle in the Arab street; it puts Arab governments on the defensive, and most of all makes it difficult for the United States to forge a coalition in the region to oppose an Iranian nuclear program and to in essence contain Iran's influence throughout the region. Given the fact that so many in the Muslim world and elsewhere see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the core issue in the region, whether we believe that to be the case or not, there is a certain logic in trying to address the issue in a way that will bring others along with other policy initiatives that the United States would like to pursue in the region.

Both men, in somewhat different ways, pointed out that we now have a growing Arab coalition worried about Iran that could be used to broaden this peace settlement beyond the Palestinians. But there were no specifics on how to get this done.

Arabs do calculate their security threats in a way that is increasingly concerned with Iran, nevertheless, they aren't on board with U.S. or Israeli policy should U.S. policy become a robust one. They do support dialogue with the Iranians, but they don't support dialogue with the Iranians when it will fundamentally undermine their own security.

But at the same time the Arabs do not want the United States or Israel to undertake military action against Iran, fearing that it will destabilize the region in a way that would be extraordinarily difficult for these governments to contend with.

Generally, the Israeli position and the Netanyahu government's position has been that there's been no new settlement construction. But, in fact, it's impossible to ask Israelis not to build in existing settlements: building in existing settlements, the Israelis say, is entirely appropriate.

What they point out is that let's say a family wants to live next to their parents or that we have growing population in the West Bank. That all sounds quite reasonable, but we have very different views on what a settlement freeze is. To the Israelis. Looking at the master plan of settlements in the West Bank, one might have Settlement A, Phase One--which is populated and built up and so forth--and Phase Two of that settlement is outside the current boundaries in Settlement A.

They consider building in Phase Two as building in an existing settlement. It's a semantic problem that has very real consequences, because it means expropriating additional territory for Israeli settlements.

There's a real effort on the part of the Obama administration to be actively involved in getting all of the players engaged in a meaningful diplomatic process; which means obviously talking to the Israelis, obviously talking to the Palestinians, and certainly working with our primary Arab interlocutors. Egypt is one of our primary interlocutors, along with Saudi Arabia, and of course Jordan. Those are three critically important states in moving this process forward. This kind of dialogue and engagement on the part of the United States had been missing during the Bush era because the Bush people had a different theory about how peace is going to be forged in the Middle East.

The Obama administration has quite a different view, and it means engaging with these governments and getting them together to try and restart these negotiations. Hopefully there will be some fruitful outcome, although in the short run it will be something short of peace.

Obama also volunteered a statement that the humanitarian situation in Gaza had to be improved. There's been a lot of criticism by the UN and others that Israel's been blocking building materials from coming in. There was no response by Netanyahu on that.

This is something that the Israeli security establishment is going to have to come to grips with because they see almost everything that could be used for humanitarian purposes in Gaza as dual use. This is clearly a situation that cannot continue. There's a tremendous amount of suffering in Gaza.

The Israelis look like they are purposely engaged in punishing an entire population, and the administration and the president had it just right. The United States has committed $300 million to humanitarian relief in the Gaza strip and there have not been rocket attacks. The Israelis need to step up and cannot keep 1.5 million people in the current situation that they are in the Gaza Strip. It's just an untenable situation for both the Palestinians and the Israelis.

The two-state solution provides the Holy Grail, the political horizon that the Palestinians need in order to engage in negotiations where they're going to have to make a fair amount of concessions. Peace negotiations only mean, from an Israeli perspective, the same thing as what has been going on intermittently since the early 1990's, which has not produced an agreement. It does not necessarily include a political horizon.

In order to support Mahmoud Abbas and his path of negotiation rather than confrontation, there needs to be a political horizon that Abbas can turn around and sell to his people. Otherwise, it provides extremist groups like Hamas an opportunity to say "look, peace negotiations mean nothing because it gives us nothing. The Israelis aren't going to withdraw, so confrontation is the way to go." If there is a political horizon and if the Israelis agree to it, it only strengthens Mahmoud Abbas.

Obama has sent a message to Netanyahu demanding that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran. The message was conveyed by a senior American official who met in Israel with Netanyahu, ministers and other senior officials. Earlier, Netanyahu's envoy visited Washington and met with National Security Adviser James Jones and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and discussed the dialogue Obama has initiated with Tehran.

The message from the American envoy to the prime minister reveals U.S. concern that Israel could lose patience and act against Iran. It is important to the Americans that they not be caught off guard and find themselves facing facts on the ground at the last minute.

Obama did not wait for his White House meeting with Netanyahu, that was scheduled for Monday, to deliver his message, but rather sent it ahead of time envoy.

It may be assumed that Obama is disturbed by the positions Netanyahu expressed before his election vis-à-vis Tehran - for example, Netanyahu's statement that "If elected I pledge that Iran will not attain nuclear arms, and that includes whatever is necessary for this statement to be carried out." After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers to carry out another holocaust."

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak do not oppose American dialogue with Tehran, but they believe it should be conducted within a limited window of time, making it clear to Iran that if it does not stop its nuclear program, severe sanctions will be imposed and other alternatives will be considered.

The American concern that Israel will attack Iran came up as early as last year, while president George W. Bush was still in office. As first reported in Haaretz, former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Barak made a number of requests from Bush during the latter's visit to Jerusalem, which were interpreted as preparations for an aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

‫State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly did not directly address the question of the U.S.'s official stance on an Israeli attack, but said Thursday that "we believe that the multilateral track with Iran is the right way to go."

"Our goal is to make them abandon their nuclear program in a verifiable way, and we will continue with this track. We decided that we want to let Iran get back to the table, to engage them, because the previous approach of isolating Iran didn't work. But we don't have a clear timetable," he said.

Following the Bush visit to Jerusalem, about a year ago the previous administration sent two senior envoys, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and the former U.S. national intelligence chief Mike McConnell to demand that Israel not attack Iran.

The previous administration also gave the message greater weight through Mullen's public statement that an Israeli attack on Iran would endanger the entire region. Since that statement, Mullen has met a number of times with his Israeli counterpart, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

On the other hand, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that ending the Israeli occupation of Arab and Palestinian territories, the establishment of an independent state of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, solving the refugee's issue according to the Arab Peace Initiative adopted in Beirut in 2002, will be the minimum required to lift the historical injustice against our Palestinian people.

The President, added in a televised speech on the occasion of the 61st commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, that Israel has tried to force Palestinians to give up, and to erase their national identity, but, 'we are here to stay, holding on to our rights, determined to get rid of the occupation.'

The President renewed his demand to Israel to commit to the international will, and to immediately stop working with their policy that would only lead to the continuation and escalation of violence. He stated, 'the time has come fro Israel to respond to the call of comprehensive just peace, and to accomplish the historical reconciliation between two peoples living on this tormented holy land.'

He affirmed that bringing back Palestinian unity, and ending this state of division on Gaza is the first thing we are looking forward to accomplish during the Palestinian national dialogue.

Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday marked the 61st anniversary of the Nakba, the "catastrophe" of the 1948 creation of Israel, which made refugees out of around 700,000 Palestinians. They have been prevented from returning to their homes by Israel ever since - instead, they have lived dispersed around the Arab world, generally as second-class citizens.

Thousands gathered in the Jebalya refugee camp in northern Gaza waving Palestinians flags and green banners of the Islamist Hamas movement. Some protestors held up placards with names of villages demolished by Israeli forces during the 1948 war.

"We will return to Jaffa and to all our lands," cried some, referring to an Arab town on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, some 60 kilometers north of Gaza.

"We will not recognize Israel," others shouted, as one banner proclaimed: "Israel is a cancerous entity which owes its creation to terrorism and injustice."

Last December, Israel began a devastating 22-day offensive against Gaza that ended in January and during which 1,400 Palestinians - most of them civilians according - were killed and thousands of homes destroyed.

Senior Hamas official Ahmad Bahar told the crowd that the Palestinian people "will never give up the right of return" to their homes and land in Israel.

He also criticized Pope Benedict XVI for not visiting the Gaza Strip during his five day visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank which ended on Friday.

"We tell the pope 'why didn't you come to Gaza to see our Holocaust?' He used double standard by supporting the occupier without taking into account the suffering of the Palestinian people," Bahar said.

The pontiff visited the Aida refugee camp outside the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Thursday, where he expressed deep sympathy with refugees.

"With anguish, I have witnessed the situation of refugees who, like the Holy Family, have had to flee their homes," he said.

The United Nations is estimating that today original Palestinian refugees of 1948 and their descendants number 4.6 million, of which one million live in Gaza.

Hamas on Thursday prevented President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestine Liberation Organization from holding any event to mark the Nakba in the tiny territory. The Islamists and Abbas' rivals have been at loggerheads since June 2007, when Hamas forced pro-Abbas forces out of Gaza, in a move some have said preempted a US-backed Fatah effort to do the same, splitting the Palestinian territories into two entities.

Israel clamped a tough blockade on the impoverished strip after Hamas was victorious in the 2006 parliamentary elections, and tightened the blockade after the 2007 Hamas takeover.

During his visit to the Holy Land, the pope called for the lifting of Israel's crippling blockade of Gaza that it has maintained since Hamas was victorious in the 2006 parliamentary elections, and tightened following the 2007 Hamas takeover.

Some human rights activists have termed the Israeli blockade collective punishment, which is illegal under international law.

Meanwhile, Leaders of rival Fatah and Hamas movements agreed on Sunday to extend their debates on outstanding issues, mainly security and government for another day, a senior Palestinian official said.

Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah leader told reporters in statements published by local news websites based in Gaza that the bilateral dialogue between Fatah and Hamas held in Cairo on Saturday, was agreed to be extended until Monday.

"It was agreed to finalize the dialogue on Monday, where the conferees and chiefs of other factions will get back to Cairo on early July to discuss the final draft of the agreement," said Shaath.

He added that it was agreed to reactivate the different committees related to security, government, PLO, elections and inter-reconciliation to finalize all the remaining differences. The committees will convene soon in Cairo, he confirmed.

Earlier on Sunday, Fatah negotiator Azzam el-Ahmed quoted Omer Suleiman, Egypt's intelligence chief as saying that "whether the conferees accept or not, a reconciliation agreement must be signed in July."

Shaath said that the final draft of the agreement will be discussed in a comprehensive meeting that will be held in July and will include the chiefs of all the factions, including Fatah and Hamas movements.

"The agreement will be signed on July 7 in Cairo," said Shaath, adding that "Egypt would send on July 7 a committee of Egyptian and Arab security officers to the Gaza Strip to observe the implementation of the agreement."

He added that Fatah and Hamas leaders will hold a last meeting in Cairo on Monday "to discuss the remained outstanding issues, and the joint committee proposed by Egypt to be in charge of implementing the agreement."

Egypt has proposed to form a factional committee to be under the command of president Mahmoud Abbas to coordinate between the two leadership, Hamas government in Gaza and Fatah government in the West Bank.

"The talks on Monday will focus on forming a joint security force in the Gaza Strip to restore security and calm in the enclave," said Shaath.

A new Palestinian government, again headed by Western-backed Salam Fayyad, was sworn in Tuesday. The new cabinet took the oath of office at the Palestinian Authority (PA) headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

About half of the 25 ministers are Fatah members and the remainder belong to other groups, but none to Hamas, which said it would not recognize the new government.

The ceremony came a day after the secular Fatah faction of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the rival Hamas adjourned a fifth round of talks in Egypt without agreeing on a unity deal.

The U.S.-educated Fayyad announced on March 7 that he had submitted his resignation to pave the way for a "national consensus" between Fatah and Hamas. The rival factions have been at loggerheads since Hamas forces ousted Abbas loyalists from the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Hamas on Tuesday accused Abbas of "deliberately sabotaging the Palestinian dialogue."

"This government is illegal and we will not recognize it," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement.

Riyad al-Malki will retain the foreign affairs portfolio in the new cabinet, and five ministries, including tourism and education, will be headed by women.