WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama declared Thursday that the borders of Israel and a Palestinian state must be based on 1967 lines, likely setting up a new clash with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a long-awaited survey of the “Arab Spring” of revolts, Obama compared “shouts of human dignity” across the region to America’s birth pangs and civil rights struggles, though laid out few radical new policy directions.

But his comments on the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process will likely draw most attention, one day before the president meets Netanyahu in the Oval Office.

Obama warned Palestinians that Israel had a right to defend itself and said that the unity deal between Fateh and the radical Islamist Hamas movement posed “profound and legitimate questions” for Israel.

“How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognise your right to exist?” Obama said.

He also bluntly told Palestinians that their effort, following the collapse of US-brokered direct talks with Israel last year, to try to win recognition at the UN General Assembly in September would fail.

“Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state,” Obama said. read more