WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged Monday from hours of meetings with President Barack Obama agreeing to restart the Palestinian peace process “immediately,” but with conditions that indicated that no breakthroughs are imminent.
Obama, meanwhile, defended his diplomatic approach to Israel’s enemy Iran, saying that the Iranian-supported terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah had grown stronger under the Bush administration’s no-diplomacy stance toward Iran.
“We’re not going to have talks forever,” Obama said, and he predicted that “we should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year” as to whether a diplomatic approach to Iran is going anywhere.
In a joint appearance with Obama at the White House, Netanyahu said that any progress with the Palestinians would hinge on the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
Netanyahu also declined to use the phrase “two-state solution,” which Obama said should be the goal. Instead, Netanyahu said that Israelis “don’t want to govern Palestinians. We want to live in peace with them. We want them to govern themselves, absent a handful of powers that could endanger the state of Israel.”
Obama said that Israeli “settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward.”
Netanyahu, however, made no public commitment toward that, and as they met, Israeli settlers were moving forward with plans to build Israel’s first new settlement in the Jordan Valley in more than a quarter-century.
The leaders spoke kindly to one another. Netanyahu called Obama “a great leader of the world” and a friend. Obama praised the prime minister’s “youth and wisdom” and announced, “I’m confident that he’s going to seize this moment.”
However, their body language appeared strained at times during their public appearance, and Obama made clear that he expects Israel to make some concessions.
“We have seen progress stalled on this front, and I suggested to the prime minister that he has an historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure,” he said.
The leaders didn’t issue any joint agreement following the meeting, which comes a week ahead of separate meetings Obama has scheduled with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
