Gaza unrest as Obama arrives
PRESIDENT Barack Obama travelled to the West Bank yesterday to meet Palestinian leaders dismayed by his failure to meet expectations that he could help deliver them a state.
Obama met Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and then Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, on the second day of his visit to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, which is dominated by challenges posed by Iran and Syria.
Hours before Obama was to board his helicopter to fly to Ramallah to meet the Palestinian leadership, two rockets fired by militants in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip hit southern Israel.
The rockets crashed down in Sderot, a border town often targeted by rockets, which Obama visited as a presidential candidate in 2008.
A senior Israeli official watching for Palestinian to the rocket fire.
“Israel will be watching very closely Abbas’s remarks in Ramallah to see if he condemns the rocket attacks,” the official said, adding “last year ... he refused to condemn rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.”
“We will also want to see if he ceases the unity talks with Hamas,” he added of the rockets fired from Hamas-controlled territory.
The Islamist group’s spokesman Sami Abu Zohri told reporters: “Hamas considers talk of rocket fire to be merely Israeli accusations said they were leadership’s response aimed at gaining sympathy from Obama... and inciting him against Palestinians.”
There was no immediate White House comment.
Obama, on the first foreign trip of his second term, says he has come to the Holy Land simply “to listen” to the parties about how to resume peace talks frozen for twoandyears.
At a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, Obama said: “It’s been lingering for over six decades. And the parties involved have, you know, some profound interests that you can’t spin, you can’t smooth over.”
Obama’s new approach was a stark contrast to early in his first term, when he declared Israeli settlement building to be illegitimate and promised to dedicate himself to peace.
He admitted on Wednesday he had perhaps made mistakes, but argued he was not the only US leader to have come a cropper on the issue. — Sapa-AFP