U.S. President Barack Obama vowed Sunday to "keep up pressure" on Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons and forcefully defended his call for an Israeli-Palestinian peace based on pre-1967 frontiers, suggesting critics had misrepresented him.

Outlining U.S. and U.N. sanctions imposed on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime, Obama said Iran is now "virtually cut off from large parts of the international financial system."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he shared U.S. President Barack Obama's vision for peace in remarks appeared aimed at defusing a deepening row with the U.S. leader.

"I am partner to the president's desire to foster peace and I value his efforts in the past and the present to achieve this goal," said Netanyahu, reacting to Obama's speech to the main pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu lectured President Barack Obama in his own office Friday, warning him not to chase "illusions" of Middle East peace and opening a deep rift in U.S.-Israel ties.

In a dramatic Oval Office appearance, after 90 minutes of talks, Prime Minister Netanyahu emphatically vowed Israel would never return to its 1967 borders and laid down a set of non-negotiable conditions for peace talks.

Top Republican contenders for the White House in 2012 accused President Barack Obama on Thursday of betraying staunch U.S. ally Israel in his new long-shot push for Middle East peace.

"President Obama has thrown Israel under the bus," thundered former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, generally viewed as the frontrunner in the race for the party's presidential nomination.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called an "urgent" leadership meeting Thursday to examine U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy speech, an aide said.

But his tentative partners in the Islamist Hamas movement immediately called on Obama to take "concrete steps" not merely issue "slogans" in support of Palestinian independence and an end to Israeli occupation.

Israel should not be asked to withdraw to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, Israel's prime minister said Thursday, after U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy speech.

In a statement issued after the speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office called on Washington to confirm it would adhere to "assurances" given to Israel by former president George W. Bush in 2004.

Israel's recently retired spy chief, Meir Dagan, has said that the Jewish state would be better off if Syrian President Bashar Assad was toppled because “this will stop help to Hizbullah,” Israeli media reported Sunday.

Dagan also told a weekend conference that Assad’s fall would strengthen the Sunni camp in Syria and in the Arab world in general. “These things will be good for Israel strategically.”

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that France wants the new Palestinian government to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

"What I heard from President Sarkozy is that they must recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people," Netanyahu said outside the Elysee Palace in Paris, after a meeting he described as "good, far-ranging and friendly".

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal buried the hatchet at a Cairo reconciliation ceremony on Wednesday that ends a nearly four-year feud but has angered Israel.

Palestinians gathered in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip to celebrate the long-awaited agreement to put an end to the rivalry between the administrations in the West Bank and Gaza, and restore the unity shattered by deadly infighting in June 2007.

Israel's government watchdog announced on Thursday he would investigate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid accusations private businessmen paid for lavish trips for him and his family.

State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss said he would probe whether the funding for the trips did not "contravene accepted norms of conflict of interest for ministers."