Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed for talks in Washington on Friday saying that U.S. President Barack Obama's vision of a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967 could leave Israel "indefensible."
"The viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of Israel's existence," he said in a statement before flying to the United States for scheduled talks with Obama.
Responding to a major Obama speech on Thursday outlining Middle East strategy, Netanyahu said he expected Washington to let Israel keep major settlement blocs beyond the 1967 lines in the occupied West Bank, under any peace deal with Palestinians.
But what President Obama said includes that Israeli requirement:
He called for a deal resulting in two states, Israel and Palestine, sharing the border that existed before Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.
It would include "mutually agreed land swaps," he said.
So it would be a peace treaty that includes land swaps that would obviously negate the idea that the boundary would be the pre-1967 border. How is this different than what Netanyahu said about keeping some land beyond the pre-1967 border? Israel has offered swaps of land for that objective before, after all.
A suspicious person would say that the Israelis agreed to protest in order to make President Obama's "concession" to the Palestinians seem genuine.
Now that would be nuanced!
