Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded his first, crucial meeting with US President Barack Obama on 18 May with broad awareness of the new comprehensive peace plan for the Middle East that Obama is expected to lay out on 4 June in a speech to the Muslim world from Cairo.rnThe US plan would mandate the immediate cessation of construction of new Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This was a demand that Netanyahu refused to accept during his visit to Washington, DC, but once he had returned to Israel his defence minister, Ehud Barak, announced that he would direct the forceful evacuation of illegal settlements in the West Bank.
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