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Countering U.S. Narrative, Israeli Sources Insist PM Negotiated Sincerely

(Times of Israel) Raphael Ahren - According to Israeli sources familiar with the peace talks, Prime Minister Netanyahu genuinely considered all the issues raised by the negotiators, weighing earnestly the pros and cons of every idea brought to his desk. They said the prime minister spent several hours every day pouring over the matters raised in the negotiating room, asking himself which positions Israel could allow itself to adopt in order to advance toward an agreement. As he said January: "We do not want to annex the Palestinians as citizens of the State of Israel and we do not want to control them." Nonetheless, Netanyahu stressed this week, if we're talking about two nation-states for two peoples, it needs to be guaranteed that Israel is recognized by the Palestinians as the nation-state of the Jewish people - something PA President Mahmoud Abbas' refused to even discuss. Even the unnamed American official who spoke to Yediot Ahronot's Nahum Barnea acknowledged Abbas' obdurate position on this issue. The U.S. official said: "We couldn't understand why it bothered him so much. For us, the Americans, the Jewish identity of Israel is obvious."
2014-05-08 00:00:00
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