Family Life

03.23.10 | FL News Team

President Obama will hold talks at the White House today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The meeting comes as Netanyahu continues to make clear that Israel won't give in to the Obama administration, which wants him to give up the idea of building new houses in East Jerusalem, on the West Bank. Speaking in Washington on Monday, Netanyahu proclaimed, quote, "Jerusalem is not a settlement -- it's our capital." He told the he American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jews have been building Jerusalem for three-thousand years and will continue to do so.

 Earlier Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the same group. She said building 16-hundred new houses in the occupied West Bank -- where East Jerusalem is located -- endangers the prospect of peace talks with the Palestinians. In his speech, Netanyahu dismissed the U.S. complaint. Israel captured the disputed territories during the 1967 Six Day War. The U.S. and the UN have repeatedly urged Israel not to build settlements in the captured territories.