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Obama to UN: "No Shortcut to Peace."

September 21, 2011

US President Barack Obama dismissed the Palestinian Authority’s statehood bid at the United Nations on Thursday saying “there is no shortcut to peace.”

“I am convinced that there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the UN – if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now,” Obama said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly.” Obama said in his third address at the opening of the 193-member General Assembly.

Obama expressed his frustration at what he discribed as “the llack of progress” in now-moribund negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, reiterating the proposal he made in April while avoiding direct reference to the pre-1967 lines..

“Faced with this stalemate I put forward a new basis for negotiations,” Obama said. “Everyone knows what that basis is. Israelis able to live in security; Palestinians knowing the territory of their future state”

Saying he believed “the Palestinians deserve a state,” Obama indirectly rejected PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ unilateral bid for statehood at the world body.

“A genuine peace can only be realized between Palestinians and Israelis themselves,” Obama said as Western diplomats push for a resumption of talks behind the scenes.

“Negotiations between the parties is the path to a Palestinian State.”

Obama also criticized the one-sided stance of nations who support the PA, but refuse to acknowledge “the very real security concerns Israel faces every day.”

“Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it,” Obama told the assembled delegates and leaders.

“Israel’s children come of age knowing children in other nations are raised to hate them. Israeli citizens have died from rockets on their homes and suicide bombers on their busses. Israel, a nation of eight-million people looks out at a world where the leaders of much larger nations call to wipe them from the map,

“The jewish people have carried the memory of centuries of exiles and persecution, and the recent memory of six million killed in the Holocaust. Friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by refusing to acknowledge these facts,

“This body must recognize the realities lived by both Israelis and Palestinians,” Obama said.

“There are no shortcuts,” Obama reiterated. “And that is what the United Nations should be focused on in the weeks and months to come.”

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