By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 22-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years, and under six different editors, at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) /
(www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM ARTICLE-WASHINGTON, D.C.- President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured) met at the White House on Monday, the first time the powerful pair has talked face-to-face in nearly a year, and on the heels of the controversial Iran Nuclear Deal that Congress approved in September that Netanyahu vehemently opposes.
Both Obama and Netanyahu pushed for peace in the Middle East during the meeting in the White House Oval Office as prospects for an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians are becoming increasingly inevitable.
"I want to thank you for this opportunity to meet with you and to discuss the enormous challenges facing the United States and Israel in the Middle East,'"said Netanyahu relative to the meeting, according to a White House press statement."There’s definitely a new Middle East. I think it poses new dangers, but it also presents new opportunities."
The president said, in particularly, that he wants children safe during the midst of war between Israel and Palestine.
"I think we also recognize that we have to find ways to change the status quo so that both Israeli citizens are safe in their own homes and schoolchildren in their schools from the possibility of rocket fire, but also that we don’t have the tragedy of Palestinian children being killed as well," said Obama.
Reached with the United States and five other world powers, , excluding Israel, the Iran Nuclear Deal lifts crippling sanctions against Iran, places a variable freeze on sensitive nuclear materials for at least a decade, and prevents the middle eastern country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, led by the United States, hope the compromise will ultimately end a twelve-year crisis over Iran's suspicious nuclear work.
Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal is one of the most comprehensive measures reached in several decades and follows a change in Iranian leadership since 2013 when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ousted longtime president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel since 2009, and who won reelection to the religious state on March 17 of this year, spoke to a joint session of Congress on March 3, and said then that the nuclear deal is too lenient, and lacks adequate safeguards.
Obama did not attend the speech, which was arranged by then House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio , who has since resigned from Congress, saying it was "politically motivated."
Netanyahu denied then that his speech was hinged on political posturing, and said that he meant no disrespect of America's first Black president.
"My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama or the office that he holds. I have great respect for both," Netanyahu told thousands of activists at a pro-Israel lobby AIPAC's annual conference shortly before his speech to Congress in March that several Democratic members of Congress boycotted.
