JERUSALEM (Dispatches) -- Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that several Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank would always remain part of the Zionist regime, amid peace talks being facilitated by the Obama administration’s Middle East envoy.

Netanyahu affirmed the Zionist state’s claim to the Etzion bloc of the settlements just south of Jerusalem. Israel captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 war.
The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, as well as Gaza and Beit-ul-Muqaddas (East Jerusalem), for a future Palestinian state.