United States President Barack Obama intends to propose a new peace plan for the Middle East that "will emphasize the whole region" and include all the moderate Arab states, according to sources close to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu cited by Maariv/nrg. One of the sources said that following Monday's meeting between the two leaders, "In contrast to his predecessors, we are hearing from Obama an insistence on moves by Arab states as well [as Israel]." The source added, "Israel committed itself to freeze settlements and was supposed to get something in return from the Arab world, but that did not happen." The prime minister told reporters that Obama will unveil his plan when he visits Cairo next month.
Netanyahu's associates said that while the two sides agreed to continue to work together, no agreements were reached during the meeting on how to continue regarding the Palestinian Authority. They say Netanyahu sought to emphasize Israel's conditions for establishment of a PA state, as is supported in many quarters. They explained, "Anyone who talks about the solution is not sufficiently emphasizing the conditions; how they can promise that this will be an entity that does not threaten Israel, that it not have an army, for example."
In his briefing with the reporters, Netanyahu was more specific: "This demands clarifying if we're talking about, for example, a Hamas state. How do we promise that it won't be a Hamas state?"