http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/middleeast/obama-netanyahu-israel-white-house.html 2014-10-01 22:42:16 Obama Does Not Share Netanyahu’s Optimism on Mideast Peace Process In a meeting at the White House, President Obama appeared to focus on regional crises and told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Jewish housing plans in East Jerusalem would impede peace efforts. === WASHINGTON — President Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Wednesday, against the backdrop of a radically altered landscape in the Middle East that Mr. Netanyahu said he believed could help revive the moribund peace process with the Palestinians. But the president, who has had an often-difficult relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, told him that the Israeli government’s approval of plans for Jewish housing in East Jerusalem would impede the prospects for peace and jeopardize Israel’s relations with Arab nations, according to a senior administration official. Speaking in the Oval Office before the meeting, Mr. Netanyahu said the threat of the Islamic State militant group, and the efforts of the United States to marshal a coalition of Arab nations to fight it, had produced a “commonality of interests between Israel and leading Arab states.” “We should work very hard together to seize on those common interests and build a positive program to advance a more secure, more prosperous and a more peaceful Middle East,” he said. At the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu said Israel’s new alignment with Arab states could provide the foundation for the renewal of peace talks with the Palestinians, which have been on hiatus since April when talks brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry collapsed. Mr. Obama, however, appeared focused less on the opportunities than on the threats from the string of crises in the region. In addition to raising the issue of settlements, he said Israel’s recent military offensive against Hamas in Gaza underscored that the current conflict between Israelis and Palestinians was unsustainable. “We have to find ways to change the status quo so that both Israeli citizens are safe in their own homes and schoolchildren in their schools from the possibility of rocket fire,” Mr. Obama said, “but also that we don’t have the tragedy of Palestinian children being killed, as well. “We’ll discuss extensively both the situation of rebuilding Gaza, but also how can we find a more sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” The meeting with Mr. Netanyahu came as Palestinian diplomats were petitioning the United Nations Security Council to set a deadline of November 2016 for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, which it has occupied since the 1967 war. The last time Mr. Netanyahu was at the White House Things went downhill from there. When Mr. Kerry’s peace effort faltered a month later, he faulted Israel for authorizing new settlements in the West Bank. And when Mr. Kerry tried to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, members of Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet excoriated him, saying he had tilted in favor of Hamas. Much has changed in seven months. Mr. Obama, who once listed the peace process as one of his top foreign-policy priorities, is now consumed with fighting the Islamic State. But some things have not changed. Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday warned the president against signing a nuclear deal with Iran that would leave it on a cusp of producing a nuclear bomb. “Iran seeks a deal that would lift the tough sanctions that you’ve worked so hard to put in place, and leave it as a threshold nuclear power,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “I fervently hope that under your leadership that would not happen.” Mr. Obama offered no new details on the nuclear talks, which have hit serious snags on the number of uranium centrifuges Iran would be allowed to retain. But he alluded to the changes that the emergence the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS or ISIL, have wrought in the Middle East. “I’ll debrief Bibi on the work that we’re doing to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL,” the president said, using a nickname for the Israeli leader. He added that the two leaders would discuss the necessity for a “shift in Arab states and Muslim countries that isolates the cancer of violent extremism that is so pernicious and ultimately has killed more Muslims than anything else.”