'67 lines not top Mideast peace hurdle: US lawmaker

Palestinian refusal to accept Israel's right to exist remains the primary impasse for Mideast peace, and not the recently revised dispute over territorial lines, the Republican US House majority leader said Sunday.

Representative Eric Cantor, the most senior Jewish member in House history, also told the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual policy conference that it was time for the Arab world and Palestinians in particular to stop "scapegoating" Israel and to earn their statehood by renouncing violence.

A Palestinian "culture infused with resentment and hatred" over the Jewish state is stymieing the peace process, which has all but frozen in recent months, and whose future is in turmoil with the Palestinian Authority recently signing a unity pact with Hamas, which Washington considers a terrorist group.

"It is this culture that underlies the Palestinians' and the broader Arab world's refusal to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state," Cantor said told some 10,000 delegates at AIPAC's annual policy conference.

"This is the root of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It is not about the '67 lines," he said to a rousing standing ovation.  "And until Israel's enemies come to terms with this reality, a true peace will be impossible."

US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are caught in a bitter disagreement over Obama's vision for peace, which he said on Thursday should be based on pre-1967 territorial lines but must include land swaps to accommodate population changes on the ground. Netanyahu bristled, bluntly telling Obama in the Oval Office that Israel would never go back to "indefensible" 1967 borders to make peace with the Palestinians.

On Sunday, in an apparent bid to soften some of his outspoken criticism, Netanyahu said "the disagreement has been blown way out of proportion," and that he the differences of opinion were "differences among friends."  Cantor stressed the importance of US leadership on the peace process, but was quick to stress that responsibility laid in large part on the Palestinians -- especially president Mahmoud Abbas.

"If the Palestinians want to live in peace in a state of their own, they must demonstrate that they are worthy of a state," Cantor said.  "To Mr. Abbas, I say: stop the incitement in your media and your schools. Stop naming public squares and athletic teams after suicide bombers. And come to the negotiating table when you have prepared your people to forgo hatred and renounce terrorism -- and Israel will embrace you."