WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama Sunday warned Israel's supporters of the dangers of the stalemate in negotiations with the Palestinians, as he forcefully defended his outline for a two-state peace deal. Obama, in a speech that was frequently applauded by the powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, said he had done “nothing particularly original” when he set down his principles for peace in a hotly-contested speech on Thursday. He then urged Israel to accept a return to frontiers in place before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, with mutual land swaps. “This basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous US administrations,” Obama told 10,000 delegates from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Nonetheless, Obama said he knew the “easy thing to do, particularly for a president preparing for re-election, is to avoid controversy,” but added he took the stand because of the urgency of reviving peace talks. Obama supervised the relaunch of negotiations last September only to see them collapse within weeks when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to renew a partial freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In a dramatic Oval Office appearance on Friday, Netanyahu emphatically rejected Obama's call to return to the pre-1967 lines, saying it would make Israel militarily indefensible before proceeding to lecture the US president. But Netanyahu may have tried to defuse the row Sunday when he said he shared Obama's vision for peace. “I am determined to work together with President Obama to find ways to renew the peace negotiations. Peace is crucial for all of us.” This time, Netanyahu made no mention of the 1967 borders. Instead, his office said: “Netanyahu expressed his appreciation for the words of President Obama at AIPAC.” – Agence France
