Obama meets with Abbas, pledges new Palestinian aid

Calling the increasingly tense environment in the Mideast “unsustainable,” President Barack Obama on June 9 said Israel needs a “better approach” in Gaza — one that would satisfy both security and humanitarian needs.

Obama, speaking after a White House meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, also announced that the United States was sending an additional $400 million in aid to Gaza and the West Bank.

Abbas welcomed the new money as a “positive sign” that the United States cares about Palestinians. According to the White House, the money will be used to increase access to clean drinking water, build schools, expand housing, and address health and infrastructure needs. The grant will be directed to non-governmental organizations unaffiliated with Hamas.

In addition, Abbas urged that the “Israeli siege of the Palestinian people” be lifted. “What we care about is living in coexistence with Israel,” he said.

President Barack Obama and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2009. photo/white house/pete souza

“Both sides have to create an environment, a climate that will be conducive to an actual breakthrough,” Obama said, adding that means the Israelis must curb settlement construction in disputed areas and the Palestinians must make progress toward security, among other issues.

“We — and I think President Abbas agrees with this — recognize that Israel should not have missiles flying out of Gaza into its territories,” Obama added. “And so there should be a means by which we are able to stop the flow of arms that could endanger Israel’s security.

“At the same time, we’re doing so in a way that allows the people in Gaza to live out their aspirations and their dreams both for themselves and their children ... we’ve already begun some hardheaded discussions with the Israelis in achieving that.”

Obama’s meeting with Abbas was supposed to have been preceded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit on June 1. But Netanyahu canceled after the flotilla incident. Instead, Netanyahu will meet with Obama in Washington June 28 and 29, Israeli officials told Jewish groups this week.

Obama this week predicted “real progress” in coming months in U.S. efforts to nudge the Israelis and Palestinians toward direct peace talks.

His meeting with Abbas came a little more than a week after Israel’s May 31 interception of a flotilla hoping to break the country’s blockade of Gaza. Nine men from Turkey were killed in the incident.

Without joining international calls for Israel to end the embargo of Gaza, Obama suggested a “new conceptual framework” to the blockade to ensure that both Israel’s security requirements and the Gaza people’s needs are met. He said he would discuss the idea with U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East.

Israel says its three-year blockade is needed to keep Gaza’s Hamas rulers from smuggling in weapons. Critics say it has choked off contact with the outside world for Gaza and caused widespread suffering for its 1.5 million Palestinians.

“It seems to me that we should be able to take what has been a tragedy and turn it into an opportunity to create a situation where lives in Gaza are actually directly improved,” Obama told reporters brought into the Oval Office at the conclusion of the meeting.

Obama said the flotilla situation was a “tragedy” and that it’s important “that we get all the facts.”

Asked whether Abbas asked him to take a tougher stance on the flotilla interception, Obama said he and Abbas spent most of their meeting time discussing how to solve “the problem” in Gaza.

As for peace talks, the United States has been pushing both sides to enter direct negotiations. The Palestinians have refused to sit down with Netanyahu until he agrees to freeze all Jewish housing construction in areas they want for an independent state, but Israel has said it has no intention of halting construction in some areas of east Jerusalem.

JTA and Ynetnews.com contributed to this report.