(Jake Tapper -ABCnews).In an interview with the BBC today, President Obama went into a bit more detail about his stated new policy that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”
"The basis for negotiations will involve looking at that 1967 border, recognizing that conditions on the ground have changed and there are going to need to be swaps to accommodate the interests of both sides. That's on the one hand and on the other hand, and this was an equally important part of the speech, Israel is going to have to feel confident about its security on the West Bank and that security element is going to be important to the Israelis.”
"The Israelis will not be able to move forward unless they feel that they themselves can defend their territory particularly given what they have seen happen in Gaza and the rockets that have been fired by Hezbollah."
The president, however, told the BBC that he wasn’t discussing Jerusalem:
“our argument is let's get started on a conversation about territory and about security, that doesn't resolve all the issues, you still end up having the problem of Jerusalem and you still end up having the problem of refugees, but if we make progress on what two states would look like, and a reality sets in among the parties, that this is how it is going to end up, then it becomes easier for both sides to make difficult concessions to resolve those two other issues.”
