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Benjamin Netanyahu...under fire at home and abroad. Photo: Sebastian ScheinerBenjamin Netanyahu...under fire at home and abroad. Photo: Sebastian Scheiner
JERUSALEM: In an address on the Middle East tomorrow, the US President, Barack Obama, is expected to ask Israel to accept a Palestinian state that matches, as closely as possible, the armistice lines before the Six-Day War of 1967.
After urging Israel and the Palestinians to return to direct negotiations, Mr Obama is also expected to announce US opposition to a Palestinian plan to seek the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state through the United Nations in September.
He will also demand that Israel accept Jerusalem as the shared capital of Israel and a Palestinian state - a core issue for Palestinians, and a position the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says he will not consider.
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In details of the speech leaked to the Israeli media, Mr Obama will endorse former US president Bill Clinton's plan for a divided Jerusalem in which all Palestinian neighbourhoods become part of a Palestinian state, while neighbourhoods with a majority of Jews would become part of Israel.
A senior Israeli source quoted in the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said that ''texts emanating from Obama's surroundings are extremely unpleasant to Israeli ears, and will be primarily disturbing to Netanyahu''.
On Monday Mr Netanyahu spelt out to the Israel parliament his own vision for peace that appeared to agree, in principle, with the establishment of a Palestinian state structured within the 1967 borders.
By declaring that Israel would hold onto the five large settlement blocks that are built beyond Israel's borders of June 4, 1967, he implied that Israel was prepared to evacuate the more than 100 smaller Israeli settlements built across the Jordan Valley on land that would form the heart of a future Palestinian state.
''The root of the conflict is not the absence of a Palestinian state but the Palestinian opposition to the establishment of the state of Israel,'' he said.
Mr Netanyahu, who is scheduled to meet Mr Obama at the White House on Friday, repeated his opposition to any division of Jerusalem. He said a Palestinian state would have to accommodate the Israeli military along the Jordan River, and that there would be no mass return of Palestinian refugees. He denied Israel would evacuate any settlements.
An Israeli commentator, Ben Caspit, said: ''Benjamin Netanyahu's breathtaking circus act yesterday recorded yet another chapter in the Knesset.
''The Prime Minister succeeded in a single impressive pirouette to wink left and fly to the right at the same time.''
The leader of the Israeli opposition, the former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, criticised Mr Netanyahu for his failure to prevent the scheduled UN vote to recognise a Palestinian state in September. ''Netanyahu has failed to rally international support for Israel's basic principles; he even failed to convince the US to support us,'' Ms Livni said.
A Palestinian Authority spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said Mr Netanyahu's speech proved that Israel was not interested in peace ''since the preconditions that Netanyahu set are unacceptable to the Palestinians and do not conform to the decisions of the international community''.
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