Israeli-US relations are "great" and there has been no better chance of a breakthrough on Middle East peace than right now, Israel's ambassador to the United States said on Sunday. "I am personally very confident. I think that the conditions today exist for moving forward toward a peace that did not exist perhaps at any other time in recent memory," Ambassador Michael Oren told CNN.
The upbeat appraisal from Oren flew in the face of recent tensions and came after President Barack Obama refused to back down in a row over Jewish settlements that has driven a wedge between the two allies.
"We have an Arab world where most of Arab leaders view another country, Iran, as the greatest threat facing them, not the state of Israel. We have a Palestinian leadership which as I said earlier is committed to the peace process," said Oren. "We have an Israeli government which is very deep, very widely represented, very stable, capable of making those hard decisions. And we have President Obama, a person who is personally committed to this process."
The rupture in US-Israeli relations occurred last month when Israeli officials announced plans to build 1,600 Jewish settlements in annexed east Jerusalem, embarrassing the visiting US Vice President Joe Biden.
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