"Netanyahu's speech leaves me confused," said Yossi Alpher, co-editor of bitterlemons.org, an online forum on Israeli-Palestinian issues. "Is he saying there will be no peace talks unless his conditions are agreed to in advance? I think he was deliberately vague."
The White House said Obama would forge ahead with efforts to end the decades-old conflict.
"The president is committed to two states, a Jewish state of Israel and an independent Palestine, in the historic homeland of both peoples," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in a statement. "He believes this solution can and must ensure both Israel's security and the fulfillment of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations for a viable state, and he welcomes Prime Minister Netanyahu's endorsement of that goal.
"The president will continue working with all parties . . . to see that they fulfill their obligations and responsibilities necessary to achieve a two-state solution."
Israel and the Palestinian Authority held peace talks in the final year of the Clinton administration and again late in the presidency of George W. Bush. The latter round was suspended in January with the two sides disagreeing over the key issues of borders, security, conflicting claims to Jerusalem and the status of Palestinians displaced from their homes during the war that followed Israel's founding in 1948.
Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said previous Israeli governments also had insisted, and Palestinian negotiators had quietly acknowledged, that a Palestinian state would be demilitarized. Likewise, he said, there has long been a tacit understanding that a final peace accord would recognize Israel as a Jewish state and that, consequently, the bulk of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants, now numbering in the millions, would not be permitted to return to Israel.
"But stating these conditions upfront only causes the other side to resist and ensures that there won't be an agreement at all," Beilin told Israel Radio. "With his tone and words, especially on the settlements, Netanyahu makes an agreement practically impossible."
The prime minister restated his pledge that Israel would refrain from building new settlements and expropriating land to expand existing ones. But he said he would not rule out building new homes for growing settler families on land already occupied by the state.
