Obama may have said that he was only stating publicly what has been assumed privately for a long time. In newspaper reports, I have read that this position has been stated openly by Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Bush during their administrations.

See the article Obama rejects controversy over his stance on Middle East peace talks.

If you go beyond the video clip above, apparently Obama also said:

“There was nothing particularly original in my proposal; this basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous U.S. administrations,”

Despite what I read on some blog comments, The Jerusalem Post is not in total agreement with Obama, but here is one of their more positive articles about what Obama said, PM: Disagreement with Obama blown out of proportion

In the article Obama: Borders will be different from June 4, 1967 lines, The Jerusalem Post quoted Obama’s speech

“Peace cannot be imposed on the parties to the conflict. No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state,” he declared. “And the United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the United Nations or in any international forum.”

I would think that such a comment needs a lot of explanation. A vote at the United Nations is exactly how the state of Israel was created. Maybe Obama is referring to how badly that turned out as far as creating peace in the middle east. Of course it is fine to say, well we made a mistake with that one, so we are not going to do the same thing to rectify that original mistake. However, that leaves the aggrieved people with with an unacceptable status quo. Not exactly fair. That is why I said the words need explanation. I did not say that they could not be explained.