【Part 3】

We know that time is of essence; we know that we must not miss this opportunity. We affirm the importance of bringing about peace and security in the region.

And I would like to thank President Obama for the support that he will give to Gaza -- and we have just talked about that now. This is a positive signal of the United States that the United States cares about the suffering of the people in Gaza and about the suffering of the Palestinian people.

And we also see the need to lift the Israeli siege of the Palestinian people, the need to open all the crossings, and the need to let building material and humanitarian material and all the necessities go into the Palestinian people.

And also we appreciate the attention given to the formation of an investigation committee that would investigate what happened in the latest events, the events of what we call the Freedom Flotilla, or the Freedom Fleet.

And I say in front of you, Mr. President, that we have nothing to do with incitement against Israel, and we’re not doing that. What we care about is to live in coexistence with Israel, in order to bring about the independent Palestinian state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and stability.

We adopt and we affirm the Arab Peace Initiative that was adopted in summits, in Arab summits, as well as in summits held by Islamic countries. Fifty-seven Arab and Islamic countries have said that they would recognize Israel if Israel withdrew from the occupied Arab land.

Mr. President, we thank you and we express our deep respect for all your efforts, specifically on the peace process and bringing about peace in the Middle East. We know the two-state solution you said is a critical interest of the United States. This is a slogan that we are proud of and we will pursue very seriously our efforts in order to bring about peace in the Middle East.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We got time for, I think, two questions. So, on the U.S. side, we’re going to call on Matt Spetalnick of Reuters.

Q Yes, Mr. President, I know you’re going to be making a statement later on Iran, but I just wondered if --

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes, so just don’t waste that question on that.

Q You’re not going to answer anything --

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I'll do that at the next one.

Q Okay. Did President Abbas ask you to take a tougher line with Israel over the Gaza aid flotilla raid, and will you in fact do so in outright condemnation of Israel’s actions? And do you support Israel’s insistence on doing a flotilla investigation on its own, perhaps with some foreign involvement, or are you in favor of the U.N. proposal for a completely independent inquiry?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, let me take the second question first. What the U.N. Security Council called for was a credible, transparent investigation that met international standards. And we meant what we said; that's what we expect.

I think everybody -- people in Israel, people in Turkey, people within the Palestinian Territories, certainly people here in the United States -- want to know the facts of this tragedy, what led to it, how can we prevent it in the future. And I think I’ve said to the Israelis directly and certainly my team has communicated the fact that it is in Israel’s interest to make sure that everybody knows exactly how this happened so that we don't see these kinds of events occurring again. And we expect that the standard that was called for in the U.N. Security Council to be met.

With respect to the issue of taking a tougher line, I think President Abbas and I spent most of our time discussing how do we solve the problem. One of the things that we see is that so often rhetoric when it comes to issues in the Middle East outstrip actually solving issues. And our conversation was focused on how do we actually allow more goods, more services into Gaza? How do we allow businesses to thrive? How can we get construction moving? How can we put people to work in Gaza?

The Palestinian Authority is already doing a number of things inside of Gaza, providing employment opportunities, providing assistance to people directly. The United States is already providing assistance. But the status quo that we have is one that is inherently unstable. And I think the Israelis have come to recognize that.

The question now is how do we create a different framework so that people in Gaza can thrive and succeed; so that extremists are isolated as opposed to having an excuse for engaging in violent activities; but also, how do we do it in a way that Israel’s legitimate security concerns are met.

We -- and I think President Abbas agrees with this -- recognize that Israel should not have missiles flying out of Gaza into its territories. 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. And that's something that we’re going to spend a lot of time focusing on. And we’ve already begun some hard-headed discussions with the Israelis in achieving that.

Q (Asks a question in Arabic.)

And, Mr. President, if I may ask you a question --

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Okay, I was just finding out what you were asking him. (Laughter.)

Q I can translate that to you if you want. I just asked him that there is talk that the administration wants to move from proximity talk to direct negotiation, what the Palestinian Authority wants to see as a condition to move to that stage.

And if I may ask you, the European Union has proposed opening of the Gaza crossing. Would you endorse that, with the E.U. supervision? And the money you talked about now, the $400 million, what mechanism -- who is going to distribute this money? Because in the past it has been a problem regarding the money.

PRESIDENT ABBAS: (As translated.) With regards to the transitioning from the proximity talks to the direct talks, we did not say -- we are not saying that we have conditions. What has happened is that we agreed that should a progress be achieved, then we would move on to direct talks. We are working in order to make progress. President Obama is working for that to see progress. And we -- this is what we have.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: With respect to the aid to Gaza, I’ll let my team give you the details in terms of how that will be administered and how the money will begin to flow.

With respect to the broader issue of lifting the blockade, as I said before, I think the key here is making sure that Israel’s security needs are met, but that the needs of people in Gaza are also met. And it seems to us that there should be ways of focusing narrowly on arms shipments, rather than focusing in a blanket way on stopping everything and then in a piecemeal way allowing things into Gaza.

So if we can get a new conceptual framework -- and I’ll be talking to my European counterparts, as well as Egypt and Israel and the Palestinian Authority -- 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.

But let me make this final point, that in the long run, the only real way to solve this problem is to make sure that we’ve got a Palestinian state side by side with an Israel that is secure. And so we’re going to be dealing with these short-term problems, but we also have to keep our eye on the horizon and recognize that it’s that long-term issue that has to be focused on. So many of the immediate problems in front of us have to do with the fact that we haven’t solved this broader problem.

Okay? Thank you very much, everybody.

END
12:21 P.M. EDT