Netanyahu defiant on 1967 borders

24 May 2011 Last updated at 04:16 GMT Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu: "Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 lines"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated his insistence that there can be no return to Israel's "indefensible" 1967 borders.

He was speaking to the US pro-Israel lobby, Aipac, on the eve of an address to the US Congress.

Mr Netanyahu and President Barack Obama have clashed over the issue recently.

Mr Obama has said the border of a future Palestinian state should be based on the 1967 lines, but modified to include land swaps with Israel.

Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six Day War.

It is the pre-war borders that the Palestinians seek to map out a future state.

That issue, along with security and Israeli settlements in the West Bank, has deadlocked peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel.

Swap talk

Mr Netanyahu promised to describe in his speech to Congress what a peace between a Palestinian state and the Jewish state would look like.

"I will outline a vision for a secure Israeli-Palestinian peace. I intend to speak the unvarnished truth. Now more than ever what we need is clarity."

He said that a peace could, and must, be realised but that the conflict persisted because "Palestinians refuse to accept the Jewish state".

The shape of future borders is one of the most contentious issues between Israel and the Palestinians

"We can only make peace with the Palestinians if they're prepared to make peace with the Jewish state."

A peace deal, he said to loud applause, "must leave Israel with security, and therefore Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 lines".

Tension flared between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu last week when the president said "the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps".

After an angry reaction from Mr Netanyahu, Mr Obama had clarified his remarks.

"Let me reaffirm what '1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps' means," he said.

"By definition, it means that the parties themselves - Israelis and Palestinians - will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967."

That is the day before the Six Day War began.

Mr Netanyahu is likely to get a warm reception from Congress, where Israel has strong and often uncritical support, says the BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen.

He will find support for his view that the Palestinians need to make big new concessions to forge any peace deal, our correspondent says.

But he says the Palestinians believe there is no point in any more negotiations if Mr Netanyahu does not agree to their independence within the 1967 border framework.

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Netanyahu addresses US Congress

24 May 2011 Last updated at 16:19 GMT Mr Netanyahu said Israel would not return to its "indefensible" pre-1967 borders Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told a joint session of the US Congress the US and Israel have no better friends than one another.

"Israel has always been pro-American, Israel will always be pro-American," Mr Netanyahu said.

His remarks come four days after he opened a rift with US President Barack Obama over the direction of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Israel enjoys strong bipartisan support in the US Congress.

"In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America's unwavering ally," Mr Netanyahu said

And he thanked the US and President Barack Obama for killing al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, saying "good riddance".

'Startling fact'

Mr Netanyahu also gave a vigorous defence of Israel's place in the Middle East, describing it as an outpost of democracy and freedom in the region.

And he said that of 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only the one million living in Israel "are truly free".

"This startling fact reveals a basic truth," he said. "Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East, Israel is what is right about the Middle East."

Mr Netanyahu was briefly interrupted by a heckler who denounced Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. He paused used the point to applaud American democracy, saying no one in the "farcical parliaments" of Tehran and Tripoli would be permitted such a protest.

"This is real democracy," he said.

Mr Netanyahu praised America's programme of sanctions against Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel's destruction.

And Mr Netanyahu praised Mr Obama's declaration that the US was determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and urged the US to hold up the threat of military action deter that outcome.

"The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation," he said. "And this is why I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message that the US will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

"If history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously. We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say 'never again', we mean 'never again'".

He said he remained committed to a two-state solution to the conflict in which an independent Palestinian state sits alongside a Jewish state.

"I'm willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace," he said. "We seek a peace where [the Palestinians] will be neither Israel's subjects nor its citizens."

But he said the future border could not rest at Israel's "indefensible" 1967 lines, because many Israelis now live in suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem beyond Israel's pre-1967 territory.

He said the precise border must be drawn at the negotiating table, but said it would be different from the 1967 border.

Noting that Israel accepts Jewish immigrants from across the world, he said the Palestinian refugees who fled Israel in 1948 must be accepted into a future independent Palestinian state.

"The Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside the borders of Israel," he said.

About 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, areas that lie behind Israel's pre-1967 borders.

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