US President Obama's bluntness has shocked some Israelis and their supporters, who long assumed that when push came to shove the United States would acquiesce to the facts Israel has created in the West Bank through its establishment of over 120 settlements since 1967. The President knocked the wind out of their sails by reiterating US support for the 1967 borders as the basis for any final peace deal. The Palestinian state, he declared, "should be... sovereign and contiguous [and] based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognised borders are established for both states."
