Obama, Netanyahu discuss path to two-state talks with Palestinians

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will try to mend their fractured relationship when they meet at the White House today. “We will never give up our hope for peace”, added Netanyahu.

If Netanyahu expressed a desire to get the ball rolling again, “it’s a hard sell, because there is a lot of doubt about Netanyahu’s sincerity”, said Natan Sachs, fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Netanyahu opened his remarks by offering condolences over the deaths of several Americans in an attack on Monday at a training center in Jordan, saying: “We are with you”.

“There is a sense of business as usual – going back to the very important issues the two countries have to discuss”, Sachs said.

While White House officials have been playing down expectations of completing their negotiations on the size of the new 10-year military aid package during this week’s visit, Obama made clear there was no question it would be renewed.

While the president referenced his well-known disagreement with Netanyahu over the nuclear deal, he said that both stood together in their commitment to preventing Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons.

Obama “has championed a sharing of intelligence, security cooperation and the guarantee of what’s called the qualitative military edge of Israel”.

Obama said the “strong disagreement” over the Iran deal were were “no secret”, but stressed that the alliance is as strong as ever.

Hoffman says the high point of that skirmish was Mr. Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress in March trying to sway lawmakers to reject Mr. Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. But they also emphasized that Obama expected to hear from Netanyahu how he would preserve the two-state option.

Senior USA officials admit that a peace deal will not come during Obama’s final year in office, but they wanted Netanyahu to lay the groundwork for a return to the negotiating table.

“I remain committed to a vision of peace of two states for two peoples, a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state”, Netanyahu said.

Mr Obama said he was looking forward to hearing from the prime minister his thoughts on how to reduce the tension with Palestinians, while reiterating his position that Israel had the right to defend itself. “We need to make a difference between terrorists and the general population”, he later said, “and these are the kind of things I intend to advance”.

Vice President Joe Biden also attended the meetings. “This is why this conflict persisted for 50 years, before there was a state, before there were territories, before there were settlements”, Netanyahu told guests at the American Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner. That deal expires in 2018.

Netanyahu’s visit to Washington is as much about public diplomacy as it is about restoring relations with Obama.