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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses US Congress over the deadlocked peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told a joint session of the US Congress the US and Israel have no better friends than one another.
“Israel has always been pro-American, Israel will always be pro-American,” Mr Netanyahu said.
His remarks come four days after he opened a rift with US President Barack Obama over the direction of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Israel enjoys strong bipartisan support in the US Congress.
“In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America’s unwavering ally,” Mr Netanyahu said
And he thanked the US and President Barack Obama for killing al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, saying “good riddance”.
Mr Netanyahu also gave a vigorous defence of Israel’s place in the Middle East, describing it as an outpost of democracy and press freedom in the region.
And he said that of 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only the one million living in Israel “are truly free”.
“This startling fact reveals a basic truth,” he said. “Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East, Israel is what is right about the Middle East.”
Mr Netanyahu was briefly interrupted by a heckler who denounced Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. He paused used the point to applaud American democracy, saying no one in the “farcical parliaments” of Tehran and Tripoli would be permitted such a protest.
“This is real democracy,” he said.
On Friday, Mr Netanyahu rejected Mr Obama’s call to base the borders of a future Palestinian state along Israel’s pre-1967 lines, with agreed land swaps.
About 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, areas that lie behind Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
In a speech on US policy in the Middle East on Thursday, Mr Obama said the borders of Israel and a future Palestinian state should be based on those pre-1967 borders, referring to those that existed before the Six-Day War.
Since then, Mr Netanyahu, who has said Israel must maintain a military presence in the Jordan valley, has repeatedly rejected Mr Obama’s call, referring to the 1967 lines as “indefensible”.
Some analysts expect Mr Netanyahu to downplay the significance of the disagreement with the US, Israel’s strongest international ally.
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Netanyahu addresses US Congress