Word: netanyahu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Wednesday, Sept. 23, President Barack Obama used his first-ever address to the U.N. General Assembly to try and reverse the impression that his ambitious Middle East peace effort had suffered a reversal at the hand of Israel's hawkish Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. "I am not naive," Obama told the gathered world leaders. "I know this will be difficult. But all of us must decide whether we are serious about peace or whether we only lend it lip service...
Many a jaded commentator saw Obama's Tuesday meeting with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as a symbol of surrender to Netanyahu's refusal of the U.S. demand that Israel halt all construction on land conquered in 1967. Instead, Netanyahu offered a partial and time-limited freeze and appeared to force the President of the United States to back down. For Abbas, the handshake with Netanyahu orchestrated by Obama was viewed as a humiliating climbdown from his refusal to talk to the Israelis until they implemented that settlement freeze. (Read about the photo-op peace process...
...Netanyahu, briefing the Israeli media after the talks, suggested that the Palestinians had also caved in to his demand for a reopening of talks without preconditions on an agenda the two sides would determine in discussions. But Abbas insisted that any talks would be based on the full range of final-status issues established by previous agreements - Netanyahu has publicly ruled out negotiating on two of those issues, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital. (See pictures of life in a West Bank settlement...
Abbas appeared to win Obama's backing in the U.N. speech, which made clear that the President has not accepted Netanyahu's position on the precursor issue of a settlement freeze even if he's decided to move on to the final-status negotiations. "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," the President insisted on Wednesday. That could be read as a response to the damage Obama's credibility has suffered in the Arab world as a result of being forced by Netanyahu to retreat on the settlement issue, which had been widely viewed as a test...
...make the concessions needed for a credible two-state solution and see U.S. pressure as the only way to achieve that outcome. That's the message in Abbas' refusal to talk in the absence of a settlement freeze. But after demanding such a freeze and then being rebuffed by Netanyahu, Obama finds himself trying to imagine a peace process between two leaders whose visions of peace are incompatible with those of their counterparts. The fact that they'll still show up when Obama calls is simply a reminder that the fate of the peace process may rest largely...