Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel can only make peace with the Palestinians if they’re prepared to make peace with the Jewish state, and his nation can’t return to the “indefensible” 1967 borders.
“Now, more than ever, what we need is peace,” Netanyahu said Monday night in Washington in an address to the nation’s largest pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Peace between Palestinians and Israelis is a vital interest for us, but it is not a panacea for the problems of the Middle East.”
Israel’s prime minister spoke a day after President Barack Obama addressed the same group, saying upheaval in the Middle East has brought a new urgency to renewing Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Netanyahu and Obama have both sought to ease tensions evident in their meeting at the White House on May 20, one day after the U.S. president said in a speech that peace talks should be based on boundaries from before the 1967 Middle East war, with agreed-upon territorial exchanges.
“Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 borders,” Netanyahu said Monday night.
