Obama Tells Netanyahu He Is ‘Ready’ to Visit Israel

Netanyahu speaks to Obama

U.S. President Barack Obama said he is “ready” to visit Israel. His reply to an invitation by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu capped off a thoroughly choreographed meeting. The last time that President Obama visited Israel was during his presidential campaign in 2008, when he visited the Western Wall, which is located in parts of the capital that the Palestinian Authority claims will be the seat of its proposed new Arab country.

Since President Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, when he had told Jewish leaders that Jerusalem is Israel’s undivided capital, he has labeled as “settlements” the Jewish neighborhoods in areas where the PA claims sovereignty. After his campaign statement on the “undivided” capital, he retreated from his position, saying that he meant that the city is not separated by the barbed wire that was present when Jordan occupied the city from 1949 until 1967.

Prime Minister Netanyahu will continue his visit in the United States with a speech Wednesday afternoon in New York to The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the central coordinating body representing 52 national Jewish organizations on national and international issues.

Tuesday’s meeting with President Obama fulfilled the prediction by Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, that “there are going to be more photographers there than at the Academy Awards.” President Obama provided photographers positive footage with a lengthy and a vigorous handshake with Prime Minister Netanyahu and claimed that the reports of bad feelings were due to the “press making a story” out of nothing.

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American media viewed the Obama-Netanyahu meeting as a political lesson for the president. CBS reported that both leaders realize that although they may “annoy” each other, they also need each other, if for no other reason than the Iranian nuclear threat. (IsraelNationalNews.com)