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Obama's Land Swap Surprise

(Jerusalem Post) Herb Keinon - Perhaps the most stunning element of Prime Minister Netanyahu's Washington trip is the degree to which he was surprised - again - by President Obama. For all the clarification Obama made during his Sunday speech to AIPAC of what he really meant by saying last Thursday that Israel should withdraw to the 1967 lines with mutually agreed-upon land swaps, in the final analysis Netanyahu was taken completely by surprise. Back in May 2009, during Netanyahu's first White House meeting with Obama, the president sprang a surprise with his call for an end to settlement construction. Beyond the whole debate of what Obama truly means when he says "1967 lines with land swaps," the concern in the Prime Minister's Office was that if left unchallenged, the impression would be that U.S. policy now called on Israel to return to those lines. It was in order to alter this perception that the prime minister challenged Obama so publicly. In addition, mutually agreed-upon swaps presupposes that Israel will have to trade land inside pre-1967 Israel for land retained beyond the Green Line - a principle Netanyahu is opposed to. This idea was part of the proposal that then-prime minister Ehud Olmert put on the table in his talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, part of an overall package that the Palestinians did not accept.
2011-05-24 00:00:00
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