White House says PM’s comments ‘encouraging’

White House Spokesman Josh Earnest says Netanyahu’s comments are “encouraging, but what matters is the follow through.”

He says Israel and the Palestinians must take a series of confidence-building measures, including a “reduction, if not an end” to the violence and the incitement and “a willingness on both sides to engage constructively.”

Earnest says settlement construction is “counterproductive.”

The White House spokesman says it’s unlikely that a peace deal — or peace talks at all — will be renewed in the last 14 months of Obama’s term.

But he says the US commitment to Israel’s security “is unshakable.”

Israel is “the strongest ally of the US in that region of the world,” he adds.

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