In what appears to be the first official response to last week’s Palestinian calls for a peace deal along the 1967 borders, Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren slammed the notion, insisting Israel would never allow anyone else to “dictate out borders” and that the borders could only be determined by Israeli officials as a result of negotiations.
Israel invaded and occupied broad swathes of territory during the 1967 war. Since then the Israeli government has heavily subsidized efforts to move roughly half a million Israelis into those regions to establish a permanent claim over them.
But the 1967 border had repeatedly been denounced by Israeli officials, who insist that there are both religious and security reasons for a permanent occupation of parts of the region. Instead they appear reluctant to hand over anything but a nominal portion of the occupied territories as a marginally independent Palestinian state.
Oren praised Netanyahu’s stance on the matter as “courageous” and insisted that Israel would not accept “peace at any price.” The most recent peace talks ended in September, when Israel allowed its freeze on settlement expansion to expire.
