Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left his Friday meeting with US President Barack Obama more encouraged than when he entered it, Israeli media reported Saturday, quoting unnamed officials traveling with the premier in the US.
Netanyahu and Obama met for 90 minutes at the White House, a day after references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a presidential speech elicited a furious response from the Israeli leader, DPA reported.
Netanyahu took issue with Obama's comment in the speech that a future Palestinian state would be based on the borders which existed in 1967, with mutually agreed land swaps. He was also angry that Obama did not explicitly say that Palestinian refugees and their descendents would not return to Israel, but would be resettled in a Palestinian state.
"There are differences, but the relations are good," The Ynet news site quoted one official as saying after the meeting.
The prime minister had made clear that Israel would not withdraw to the 1967 borders, the unidentified official said, and added that Israel "will not accept refugees or talk to Hamas. They can forget about it."
"Obama's behavior was very clear and showed that they were trying to calm things down. A private lunch was another way of reducing tension. They understood that they went too far with Netanyahu," another unnamed official said.
Another official, or possibly the same one, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post daily as saying that Netanyahu came out of the meeting with Obama more encouraged than when he went in. The official did not explain why this was the case.
The official said Netanyahu had made it clear that it was dangerous to have "unrealistic expectations," and that raising Palestinian hopes of a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, or the possibility that Israel would allow descendents of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, did just that.
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