Last week’s parliamentary elections in Israel open new avenues for Middle East
peace and the US will pursue potential opportunities, outgoing Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday.
“I actually think that this
election opens doors, not nails them shut,” she told an assembly in Washington
that was broadcast worldwide. “I know that President [Barack] Obama [and] my
successor, soon-to-be secretary of state John Kerry, will pursue this, will look
for every possible opening,” said Clinton.
Obama on Monday called Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to congratulate him on “his party’s success in
winning a plurality of Knesset seats.”
During the phone call, Obama told
Netanyahu he looks forward to working with the new government, and reiterated
his commitment to the “deep and enduring bonds” between Israel and the United
States.
Obama also pledged to the prime minister to “work closely with
Israel” on their “shared agenda for peace and security in the Middle
East.”
The phone call came almost a week after the prime minister won a
narrow victory in the election on Tuesday, giving credence to reports that the
two leaders had less than cordial relations.
Former US ambassador to
Israel Martin Indyk told Israeli media outlets on Monday that while Obama and
Netanyahu do indeed have chemistry, at the moment it is “bad
chemistry.”
Speaking to Army Radio, Indyk called it a “mistake” for Obama
not to visit Jerusalem on his pre-election trip to Israel in 2008, and that he
erred in not visiting Jerusalem since. It is “very important” that Israelis come
to see Obama as “a man that is deeply committed to Israel’s security,” he
said.
With regard to Obama’s state of mind, Indyk said that he believes,
“President Obama is feeling quite frustrated because he rightly feels that he
has done the right thing by Israel, but Israel is not responsive.”
Indyk
suggested that once Netanyahu has formed his new government, he should “reach
out to President Obama and try to turn a new page.”
He added that the
“relations between the United States and Israel are more important than the
differences between the two leaders.”
Referring to these tensions, which
have been widely reported, Indyk said that the two heads of state “need to
overcome them.”
Turning to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, in
which he played a role during his two stints as American envoy to Israel in the
1990s, Indyk said that, unlike Netanyahu, he believes Israel does have a partner
for peace in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
“There is a
partner and he’s just up the road in Ramallah, his name is Abu Mazen [Abbas] and
he’s committed to peace with Israel and to the two-state solution and to
preventing violence and terrorism.”
He said that Israel, “which holds
almost all the cards must find a way to deal with him.”
It is not enough
for the Israelis to put their “head in the sand... and say there is no partner
and therefore we don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Indyk said that
recent Israeli elections, in which social issues were a major factor, showed
“Israelis want a normal life,” but warned that, “they cannot have a normal life
until they resolve the Palestinian problem.”
Reuters contributed to this
report.
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