In New Peace Push, Quartet Backs Obama’s 1967 Formula
The foreign ministers of the Middle East Quartet will be meeting today in Washington and are expected to release a statement endorsing U.S. President Barack Obama’s May 19th speech on the Middle East, which called for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the borders of a future state based on pre-1967 lines with agreed-upon land swaps.
According to diplomatic sources, the Quartet, which consists of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, will not invite the parties to a summit meeting but will instead send a delegation to the region to determine if the will exists and the time is ripe for renewed negotiations.
Yesterday the group of eight senior Israeli cabinet members convened to discuss the anticipated announcement by the Quartet following a similar meeting on Friday. A diplomatic source in Jerusalem said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet colleagues have concerns that the Quartet announcement could provide a surprise for Israel similar to Obama’s May speech, the contents of which were revised less than 24 hours before it was delivered.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
Fast Forward A Palestinian man in Philadelphia served kosher bagels for decades. Then customers found his Facebook profile.
- 3
Opinion Is this new documentary giving voice to American Jewish anguish — or simply stoking fear?
- 4
Fast Forward Trump’s antisemitism chief shares ‘Jew card’ post from white supremacist
In Case You Missed It
-
Books Why Jews were like everyone else — only more so — during slavery and the Civil War
-
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
-
Yiddish לאָמיר פֿאַרגלײַכן צוויי רוסישע נוסחאָות פֿון באַשעוויסעס ראָמאַן „דער שאַרלאַטאַן“Comparing two Russian versions of Bashevis’s novel ‘The Charlatan’
איין איבערזעצונג קלינגט אויף רוסיש גאַנץ נאַטירלעך, און די צווייטע — נישט. וואָס טוט זיך דאָ?
-
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.