Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets supporters at the party's election headquarters WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama ...
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| Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets supporters at the party's election headquarters |
While senior American
officials said the administration was still evaluating options, they suggested
the U.S. could ease its staunch opposition to Palestinians turning to the UN
Security Council to create a state.
"There are policy
ramifications for what he said," one official said of Netanyahu's campaign
rhetoric rejecting the creation of a Palestinian state. "This is a
position of record."
If Netanyahu holds firm
to his opposition to a two-state resolution to the Mideast conflict, it could
force whoever sits in the Oval Office — now and in the next administration — to
choose between the prime minister and a longstanding U.S. policy with
bipartisan support.
Hours after the Israeli
election results were finalized, the White House quickly reaffirmed its support
for the idea of two independent nations living side by side, a central tenet of
peace negotiations led by presidents from both U.S. political parties. And the
White House sharply chastised Netanyahu's party for using anti-Arab rhetoric in
the lead-up to the election.
"Rhetoric that
seeks to marginalize one segment of their population is deeply concerning and
it is divisive," Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Frustrated by both
Israel and the U.S., Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has become
increasingly aggressive in efforts to secure a Palestinian state through other
means, including the UN Security Council. The U.S. has veto power on the
council and has repeatedly warned Abbas it would block his efforts to use that
avenue.
But on Wednesday, a
senior administration official said only that the administration was evaluating
its options on Security Council action and other possible responses, notably
not repeating administration threats to block the Palestinians. A second
official confirmed the U.S. could decide not to veto Security Council action.
The officials were not
authorized to speak by name about internal deliberations and commented only on
condition of anonymity.
Most Republican
presidential hopefuls welcomed Netanyahu's victory, but they were notably
silent about whether they backed Palestinian statehood.
Former Republican
President George W. Bush made a two-state solution a cornerstone of his efforts
to secure peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Obama also has pursued
Palestinian statehood, most aggressively in a months-long push for peace that
ultimately collapsed last year.
Hillary Rodham Clinton,
the Democratic front-runner if she enters the 2016 campaign, did not comment on
the Israeli elections. As Obama's first secretary of state, she worked closely
with Netanyahu and championed an independent Palestinian state.
Aaron David Miller, a
longtime Middle East adviser to secretaries of state from both parties, said it
was unlikely a U.S. president of either party would abandon support for
Palestinian statehood in the near future.
"I suspect it is
the fate of both Democratic and Republican presidents to be caught in a
situation in which a two-state solution is too difficult to implement on the
one hand and yet too difficult to abandon on the other," said Miller, now
a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington.
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