WarSclerotic

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Friday and told him she believes the Palestinians are responsible for stalling the diplomatic process and that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should return to the negotiating table.

“We believe that the Palestinians are going to have come to the table. President Abbas is not helping the Palestinian people at all. He hasn’t acknowledged Hamas,” Haley said.

“The Palestinians, if they want to blame anyone, it shouldn’t be Israel. They should be looking at President Abbas and saying, ‘What are you doing for us?'”

Haley also made it clear she had no plans to meet with Abbas, who was also in New York for the General Assembly.

Netanyahu thanked Haley for her efforts in condemning Hamas during a General Assembly vote over events in the Gaza Strip in June.

“I said yesterday that the U.N. hall is still full of anti-Israel resolutions, but when you are at the U.N., the situation is better and I want to thank you for clearing the air out of that hall,” Netanyahu told Haley.

He added that Haley’s and President Donald Trump’s work with regard to the UNWRA and UNESCO agencies was “amazing.”

Haley responded by saying, “The support is very moving. It’s nice that our little work here is being noticed.”

In an interview with CNN over the weekend, speaking in the wake of Trump’s comments last week endorsing a two-state solution, Netanyahu reiterated that Israel would not commit to a two-state solution.

“I’ve discovered that, if you use labels, you’re not going to get very far because different people mean different things when they say ‘states.’ So rather than talk about labels, I’d like to talk about substance,” Netanyahu said.

“People say, ‘Was that [Trump’s statement] commensurate with a state?’ I don’t know, you decide. … I want the Palestinians to govern themselves, but not to be able to threaten us,” he said.

Netanyahu said the important questions are who would control a Palestinian state and whether it would truly be demilitarized with “none of the powers to threaten us.”

“Israel has to have the overriding security, not the U.N., not Canadian Mounties, not – I don’t know – Austrian or Australian forces. Israeli forces have to have the security control, otherwise that place will be taken over by Islamist terrorists, either Daesh, ISIS or Hamas or Iran, all of the above,” Netanyahu said. “And that’s my condition.”

Asked if Israel would have to make large concessions because of the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Netanyahu indicated that he had not yet seen Trump’s Middle East peace plan.

“I’m certainly going to look at it and look at it … with a keen and open mind, because I know there’s great friendship to Israel. I always said that I’m willing to look at peace proposals put forward by the United States,” he said.

Netanyahu also touched on Iran, saying the Trump administration’s policy to increase pressure on the Islamic republic is a step welcomed by other countries in the Middle East.

“You put growing pressure on Iran to cease its aggression in the region and its secret efforts to achieve a bypass for the nuclear program; I think that very wise,” he said. “Where you’ll end up is a different matter, but the idea is to get Iran back in the box.”

While in New York, Netanyahu also met with other world leaders, including Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Belgian President Charles Michel and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales.