When reached via cell phone immediately after President Obama’s speech urging a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev sounded as though he had been slapped in the face.
Netanyahu swiftly rejected Obama's call for Israel to pull back to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. Roughly translated from Hebrew, a statement from the Prime Minister’s office said that they appreciated Obama's commitment to peace, but called the pullback to the 1967 borders "indefensible," and said that the Palestinians were less than an honest partner in the peace process.
While the idea of using the 1967 borders as a starting point to negotiate land swaps for a final peace deal is not new, hearing an American president use those words sent chills through the Netanyahu government, which is loathe to even think the words “'67 borders.”
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