Israel refuses Obama’s call for border retreat

SHOWING no progress toward peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat alongside President Barack Obama yesterday and declared that Israel would not withdraw to 1967 borders to help make way for an adjacent Palestinian state. Obama had called on Israel to be willing to do just that a day earlier.

The Israeli leader said he would make some concessions, but Israel would not go back to the lines from decades earlier because they would be “indefensible.”

For his part, Obama said that there were differences of formulations and language but that such disputes are going to happen “between friends.”