NEW YORK: United States’ president Barack Obama on Wednesday raised profound concerns over Israel’s continuing settlement construction that has a corrosive effect on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, US officials said.
Obama held a bilateral meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
The two leaders also discussed Israeli-Palestinian relations and the recent spike in violence between the two sides, a senior US official told reporters after the meeting.
The US has expressed deep concerns over Israel’s settlement activities and warned that such move undermines the prospects for a two-state solution.
Israel occupied the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip territories, where five million Palestinians lived, during the 1967 Mideast War.
The last round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ended in April 2014 with no results.
Since then, the peace process has been stalled due to deep differences over borders and continued Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank.
By now, there have been no serious actions to resume the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Before their meeting, Obama and Netanyahu reaffirmed the strong alliances between US and Israel, and hailed the massive deal on US military assistance to Israel signed last week.
“It greatly enhances Israel’s security. It fortifies the principle that you’ve enunciated many times that Israel should be able to defend itself, by itself, against any threat,” Netanyahu said of the deal that will give the Israeli military US$38 billion from fiscal year 2019 to 2028.
The new 10-year deal, which constitutes the single largest pledge of military assistance in US history, includes US$33bil (RM135.96bil) in Foreign Military Financing funds and an unprecedented US$5bil (RM20.6bil) commitment in missile defence assistance.
Obama said the deal is indicative of the “unbreakable” bond between the US and Israel.
“What it does is provide an assurance and a foundation for the kinds of ongoing military and intelligence cooperation that has been the hallmark of our relationship,” Obama said. – Bernama
