Speaking today at the AIPAC annual conference, President Barack Obama addressed the controversial suggestion he made that the peace process between Israel and a prospective Palestinian state start with the pre-1967 borders, before Israel occupied Palestine.

The only thing more furious than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the backpedalling done by Obama at the speech, where he was quick to insist simultaneously that the reference to 1967 wasn’t new and that he wasn’t really serious about it.

Rather Obama insisted that the “1967 lines” would need to be revised to account for what he referred to in the speech as “demographics changes” but what most people in the world refer to as the construction of settlements in the occupied territories. The expansion of settlements ever deeper into Palestine has been the chief reason the Palestinian Authority left the peace talks in September.

Obama’s speech was aimed primarily at placating the anger his unseemly call for peace caused among AIPAC and its affiliates, and wedged into a tight speech with pledges of more military aid to Israel and promises to move against Iran, he appears to have been successful in his task. Through the speech he was loudly cheered by attendees.