Obama sees `67 borders as starting point for peace deal
Baku, May 20 (AZERTAC). President Obama, seeking to capture a moment of epochal change in the Arab world, began a new effort on Thursday to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, setting out a new starting point for negotiations on the region`s most intractable problem
A day before the arrival in Washington of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank — should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama`s formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution.
Mr. Obama`s statement represented a subtle, but significant shift, in American policy. And it thrust him back into the region`s most nettlesome dispute at a time when conditions would seem to make reaching a deal especially difficult.
The Israeli government immediately protested, saying that for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders would leave it “indefensible.” Mr. Netanyahu held an angry phone conversation with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday before the speech, officials said, in which he demanded that the president`s reference to 1967 borders be cut.
Those issues are delicate enough, but the diplomatic row with Israel highlighted the acute sensitivities that Mr. Obama faces as he seeks to link the changes in the Middle East with the conflict at the region`s heart.
Israel`s victory over Egypt and other Arab neighbors in that war expanded its control over territory in the West Bank and Gaza inhabited by millions of Palestinians, creating a greater Israel — including all of the capital, Jerusalem — but one that oversees a resentful occupied population.
Mr. Obama also noted that Israel and the Palestinians would have to swap territory on either side of that border to account for large Jewish settlements that have taken root in the West Bank since 1967.
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