The Obama administration might be open to lending its support to the UN Security Council’s resolution that would define the principle for a two-state solution as based on Israel’s 1967 borders, a senior White House official told The New York Times. The move would come in response to Netanyahu’s withdrawal of his support for the establishing of a Palestinian state as expressed in his Bar Ilan speech in 2009.
The U.S. has previously refused to endorse the resolution, which allows for mutually agreed swaps of territory between Israel and the future Palestinian state. Israel vehemently opposes it.
“The premise of our position internationally has been to support direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” the official told the Times. “We are now in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions going forward.”
Two weeks ago, after Netanyahu’s speech before the U.S. Congress, White House officials told Haaretz that Obama was interested in making another attempt at advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during his last two years in office. They made it clear that the decision on how and when to move forward would be made only after the Israeli elections.
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