Israel wants peace talks, Binyamin Netanyahu tells Barack Obama | World news | The Guar... - 0 views
www.guardian.co.uk/...hu-israel-palestine-peacetalks
US Israel Palestine Iran Obama Benjamin Netanyahu
shared by Argos Media on 19 May 09
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Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, met President Barack Obama yesterday and said that he wants to begin immediate peace talks with the Palestinians aimed at self-government, but he stopped short of explicitly committing Israel to Palestinian independence.
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Obama said he told Netanyahu that the goal of "an extraordinary opportunity" for peace must be "allowing the Palestinians to govern themselves as an independent state".
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"I want to start peace negotiations with the Palestinians immediately," he said. "I want to make it clear that we don't want to govern the Palestinians. We want to live in peace with them, we want them to govern themselves without [control over] a handful of powers that could endanger Israel. There'll have to be compromises by Israelis and Palestinians alike."
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He said a precondition of any agreement is for the Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, which Hamas has refused to do. That in turn is likely to mean that the Israelis will insist on negotiating only with Fatah, a move likely to deepen the divide in the Palestinian camp.
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"Israel is going to have to take difficult steps," Obama said. "Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward. That's a difficult issue, I recognise that. But it's an important one and it has to be addressed."
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But Netanyahu's failure to speak of an independent state – instead talking of "an arrangement where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in dignity, in security and in peace" – and his insistence that the Palestinians be denied certain powers, such as control over their own borders and airspace, is a reminder to Obama of the difficulties he is likely to face in dealing with Israel's well practised tactics of prevarication and obstruction.
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But Obama suggested that Hamas should be brought in to the talks, when he spoke about the failure of isolation in dealing not only with the Palestinian group but also Hezbollah and Iran.
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"Understand that part of the reason that it's so important for us to take a diplomatic approach is that the approach we've been taking, which is no diplomacy, obviously has not worked. Nobody disagrees with that. Hamas and Hezbollah have got stronger. Iran has been pursuing its nuclear capabilities undiminished. Not talking clearly hasn't worked," he said.
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"Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only be a threat to Israel and to the United States, but would be profoundly destabilising in the international community as a whole and could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could be extraordinarily dangerous for all concerned, including for Iran," Obama said.
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He said the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Iran nuclear issue had a bearing on each other. "To the extent we can make peace between the Palestinians and Israelis then it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with a potential Iranian nuclear threat."
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Obama is likely to urge Arab states to recognise Israel as part of a package that would include its withdrawal, not only from the West Bank but also the Golan Heights, after they were captured from Syria in the 1967 war.