US President Barack Obama renewed his calls for “the creation of a sovereign state of Palestine” as he embarked on the second day of his Middle East tour Thursday with a visit to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
Meeting with his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas just hours after two Kassam rockets launched from Gaza hit the Israel town of Sderot causing damage to a residential home, he condemned the “violation” and accused Hamas of the violence, nevertheless insisting that the Palestinian “deserve their right to be respected and a life of dignity and opportunity”.
On the eve of his arrival in the heart of the Palestinian administration in the West Bank, at a joint press conference with Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama had praised the encouraging statistics which showed no Israeli civilian lives were claimed as a result of terrorist attacks from the West Bank in 2012, a figure he said spoke to “what a strong Palestinian government can do”.
Responding to Netanyahu’s offer to “extend the hand of peace to the Palestinian people”, Obama deferred commenting on the viability of kickstarting peace talks until after Thursday’s meeting with Abbas.
Abbas for his part told the American president he was “ready to implement all our commitments in order to launch the peace process and achieve a two state solution”, as he cautioned that “peacemaking requires courage, and also expressions of good faith and recognition of people’s rights”.
He also used the opportunity of the high-profile one-on-one visit to raise his ongoing concerns at “the risks that the continuity of settlements for this land and the importance of releasing prisoners”, statements that Israel has repeatedly condemned as unhelpful preconditions that serve as obstacles to restarting direct peace talks between the two sides.
Reiterating widespread international condemnation of Israeli settlements, most notably from the EU which has consistently argued that such measures contravene international law and are detrimental to efforts aimed at achieving a two state solution, Abbas insisted his calls to abandon their expansion were in line with UN Security Council resolutions and that his government demanded “nothing other than the implementation of international law”.
“We never gave up our vision that settlement activity is illegal, that the Israeli government understands this. We hope they listen. We spoke about this with the President and we clarified this,” he added in comments to reporters following his meeting with Obama.
Obama for his part acknowledged Palestinian “frustration” with Israel’s continued settlement expansion policy, as he maintained the US stance towards such policy was unchanged in considering it not to be constructive, appropriate or advance the cause of peace”.
However, in a sign of the deliberate diplomacy that has so far characterised his talks with both sides on this, the first foreign tour of his second term in office, he conceded that the Israeli political landscape was “complicated” and that such issues were “not going to be resolved overnight”.
The US President paid tribute to President Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, for the progress they’ve made in building the institutions of a Palestinian state.
"Ramallah is a very different city than the one I visited five years ago. There’s new construction. There’s new businesses, new start-ups, including many high-tech companies, connecting Palestinians to the global economy," pointing out that "this stands in stark contrast to the misery and repression that so many Palestinians continue to confront in Gaza — because Hamas refuses to renounce violence; because Hamas cares more about enforcing its own rigid dogmas than allowing Palestinians to live freely; and because too often it focuses on tearing Israel down rather than building Palestine up."
"We saw the continuing threat from Gaza again overnight, with the rockets that targeted Sderot. We condemn this violation of the important cease-fire that protects both Israelis and Palestinians — a violation that Hamas has a responsibility to prevent," Obama added.
In an echo of his comments to media Wednesday night he concluded: “The U.S. is committed to realizing two states. We seek an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel so that the two sides enjoy prosperity and peace. The only way to achieve this goal is via direct negotiations.”
Regarding border determinations of a future Palestinian state, Abbas remained firm in his commitment to honour the guidelines of the Road Map, consisting of an “independent state of Palestine along the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital”. This, he maintained, was “possible”, despite Israel’s vehement insistence that Jerusalem will remain the “eternal capital” of the Jewish State.
Following on from his insistence to media Wednesday night that his tour of the region would be considered a success if he was able to better determine the positions of both sides, Obama continued to promote people-to-people relations as he said he wanted both sides “to be doing what they can to build a sense of trust, and I hope that the US government can be helpful in that”.
The US President was due to address a young audience at the Jerusalem Convention Centre later Thursday afternoon for a keynote speech, in preference to the more traditional speech for visiting US Presidents to the Knesset, as he continues to expound on his desire to engage with the future of Israel and Palestine, students, whom he considers the key to securing peace in the region.
In a press conference following his meeting with close political ally and Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres Wednesday, he referred to the region’s youth as “the seeds of progress, the seeds of security, the seeds of peace2, as he concluded: “I believe that if we tend to them, if we nurture them, they will yield fruit in every hill and valley of this land, not only for the children we met today but for Israelis, for Palestinians, for Arabs across the region. That's not only good for the children of this region, but it’s good for my children and the children of America.”
On Friday, the US President is to attend a wreath laying ceremony in Jerusalem at Mount Herzl at the grave of Theodor Herzl and the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and participating in a ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance.
In the afternoon, he will travel to Amman, Jordan, where he will meet and have dinner with King Abdullah II of Jordan.