WASHINGTON — President Obama said h

WASHINGTON — President Obama said he has told Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu that the Israeli leader’s remarks in the closing days of his re-election campaign had upended the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and ran counter to the very nature of Israeli democracy, an unusually forceful and public condemnation of the top official of a vital United States ally.
In his first public comments on the matter since Mr. Netanyahu’s victory in Tuesday’s elections, Mr. Obama said the prime minister’s pre-election statement that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch had all but foreclosed the chance for negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I indicated to him that given his statements prior to the election, it is going to be hard to find a path where people are seriously believing that negotiations are possible,” Mr. Obama said in a videotaped interview with The Huffington Post conducted on Friday and released on Saturday.