November 9, 2015 — New York, New York
AJC welcomed the outcome of today’s meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House.
“President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu demonstrated that U.S.-Israel ties continue to be robust and mutually supportive, and that the shared values and interests of our two full-throttled democracies outweigh any momentary differences,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris.
The White House meeting reportedly went longer than scheduled. The two leaders discussed, among other things, a renewal of the U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding to provide military aid; the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and ominous terrorist threats in the region.
In public statements before the two leaders met privately, Obama said that Israel’s security is a “top priority,” and Netanyahu thanked the president “for this opportunity to strengthen our friendship, which is strong, strengthen our alliance, which is strong.”
Netanyahu reasserted his commitment to “a vision of peace of two states for two peoples, a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.” He reiterated what he said at the UN General Assembly in September, affirming, “I want to make it clear that we have not given up our hope for peace — we’ll never give up our hope for peace.”
Obama condemned “in the strongest terms Palestinian violence against innocent Israeli citizens.”
“Both the tone and the substance of the meeting were in a spirit of being productive — let’s see what we can do, not let’s see how we can argue,” Netanyahu told reporters after his meeting with the president.
