The Obama administration continues to downplay its criticism of the Israeli government following initial outrage over a settlement expansion plan announced during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit last week. In his first public comments on the settlement controversy, President Obama told Fox News that Israel remains “one of our closest allies… [with] a special bond that’s not going to go away.” Obama described the settlement construction as “not helpful” and stressed that he had also criticized Palestinians for staging protests in East Jerusalem.

President Obama: “When I sent Vice President Biden there, it was at a moment where we were trying to restart talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The actions that were taken by the interior minister in Israel weren’t helpful to that process. Prime Minister Netanyahu acknowledged as much and apologized for it. And what we’ve said is we need both sides to take steps to make sure that we can rebuild trust, and yesterday when there were riots by the Palestinians against a synagogue that had reopened, we condemned them in the same way, because what we need right now is both sides to recognize that it is in their interests to move this peace process forward.”