Netanyahu answers Obama: "Our land is not stolen land"

Speaking in Belfast on Tuesday, former US president Barack Obama said Jews understandably sought a refuge after millennia of persecution, but that "they took land off people and they were expelled."

Obama said an Israel that takes "whatever we want" without concessions may succeed in the short term but has "ceded moral ground."

"The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in the land of our forefathers," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video Friday, calling the remarks regrettable without naming Obama.

— Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister

Netanyahu said the obstacle to peace is the refusal of Israel's and America's enemies to recognize a Jewish state in any borders.