President Barack Obama is considering agreeing to a United Nations Security Council resolution “embodying the principles of a two-state solution that would be based on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and mutually agreed swaps,” a senior administration official has told the New York Times.
Security experts along with Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have long argued that pushing Israel back to its pre-1967 Arab-Israeli war boundaries would make it impossible for the Israeli military to defend the Jewish state.
“The premise of our position internationally has been to support direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” a senior White House officials who refused to reveal their identity told the Times. “We are now in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions going forward.”
Some have argued that the administration’s new pressure towards the Jewish state stems from anger over Netanyahu’s successful reelection as the country’s Prime Minister.
The Israeli Prime Minister has previously explained directly to Obama why the 67’ lines are non-negotiable for Israel’s defense. “Israel wants peace. I want peace,” but “a peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality,” Netanyahu explained to the President in a 2011 meeting.
President Obama took the position in 2011 that the borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state “should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”
Israel’s post-67’ borders are a result of successfully defending itself against multiple Arab aggressors in the 1967 Arab-Israeli 6-day war. Israel took control of the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, from the Kingdom of Jordan, after the Arab armies failed in their mission to annihilate the Jewish state. With the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel became the first country to offer the Palestinian people self-governing land.