Obama, wearing a yarmulke, lays a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem (Flash90)
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama tried to say all the right things Wednesday, affirming that as president he would preserve the close relationship between Washington and Jerusalem, and pledged that Israel's security would be a top priority in his administration.
"I'm here on this trip to reaffirm the special relationship between Israel and the United States and my abiding commitment to Israel's security and my hope that I can serve as an effective partner, whether as a U.S. senator or as president," Obama said during a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
CNN Backgrounder on Obama visit
Obama had a packed day of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
He visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and held meetings with Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
Raw video of Obama's photo-ops with Israeli leaders
Obama held a breakfast meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak. According to a statement released by the Defense Ministry the two held a "vigorous and intense discussion touching on all the basic issues and future challenges facing Israel and the free world in the region."
The opposition Likud chairman and former prime minister said, following their talks, that Obama vowed never to seek to damage Israel's security. Both men agreed on the "primacy" of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Netanyahu said.
In an interview with CBS News conducted shortly before he embarked on his trip to Israel, Obama reiterated Israel's right to defend itself and asserted that an IAF attack on an alleged nuclear facility in Syria in September of 2007 was "appropriate."
"Yes," Obama said. "I think that there was sufficient evidence that the [Syrians] were developing a site using a nuclear blueprint that was similar to the North Korean model."
"Ultimately," he continued, "these are decisions that the Israelis have to make."
"I will not hypothesize on [an Israeli attack in Iran]," he said. "I think Israel has a right to defend itself. But I will not speculate on the difficult judgment that they would have to make in a whole host of possible scenarios."
Obama said, "I'll never compromise Israel's security. Terrorism is not theoretical, it's right here a block away from this hotel, and it must be fought with full force and strength." He was referring to the bulldozer terror attack in Jerusalem just a few hours before he arrived at the King David Hotel, just up the street from the site of the attack.
Obama at Yad Vashem
During his visit to Yad Vashem, Obama laid a wreath, lit a memorial flame, and deemed the place to ultimately be a place of hope. "At a time of great peril and torment, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man's potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world," he wrote in the guest book.
American tourists who passed him by at the memorial told him, "Remember what you see here," and he replied, "Yes, I understand, I understand," said Yad Vashem's director, Avner Shalev. He said he wanted to brings his daughters to the memorial site.
But the somberness of the occasion at Yad Vashem also gave way to moments of warmth and lightheartedness at the home of Israel's president. Peres said that he had read Obama's two memoirs and had been moved by them. The Israeli president handed Obama an English translation of a book he himself wrote, The Imaginary Voyage: With Theodor Herzl in Israel.
The Democratic presidential candidate praised Peres's contribution to Israel's development which he called "a miracle": "For most of Israel's 60 years, you have been deeply involved in this miracle that has blossomed and we are extremely grateful, not just as Americans but as world citizens, to your outstanding service to your country and the insight that you have shared with us," said Obama.
Obama also complimented the 84-year-old Israeli president on his relatively youthful appearance. "I also want to get his recipe for looking as good he does," Obama said. He added: "You have forgotten more than I will ever now," apparently a compliment, but disturbing to many Israelis who associate Peres with policies that ignored Palestinian terror attacks and agreement violations in the blind pursuit of peace that has ultimately proven deeply disappointing.
In the afternoon Obama was driven from Jerusalem to the West Bank town of Ramallah for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Obama met with Abbas for an hour Wednesday under heavy security at Abbas' West Bank government headquarters. World Net Daily reported that some of the security provided for Obama was actually supplied by the Palestinian Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades, a branch of the ruling Fatah party which both Israel and the United States consider a terror organization.
Obama deepened Palestinian fears of U.S. bias towards Israel in a speech to American Jewish leaders in June when he said Jerusalem must remain Israel's undivided capital -- even though the U.S. government has never recognized Israel's 1967 annexation of east Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as part of their future capital. Obama later clarified that he believes the future of Jerusalem is to be determined in negotiations -- Washington's longstanding policy. The fate of the city is currently being discussed in U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Palestinian officials said they didn't bring up the Jerusalem remarks in their meeting with Obama on Wednesday. However, Kadoura Fares, a legislator in Abbas' Fatah movement, said Obama's slip-up on such a key issue caused serious damage. "His correction was not enough," Fares added. "He should have said he recognizes the Palestinian right to freedom."
The Islamic militant Hamas group, which rules the Gaza Strip, said Obama was unwelcome and criticized Abbas, a bitter rival, for receiving him. "Obama wants to go to the White House through Tel Aviv, at the expense of the Palestinians," said a Hamas spokesman.
Abbas aides insist the Palestinian leader's meeting with Obama offered an important opportunity. Abbas listed Palestinian grievances, including Israel's "continued settlement construction and refusal to ease restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank," said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat.
In his meeting with Abbas, Obama said "that he will be a constructive partner in the peace process" and would not "waste a minute" once elected, Erekat said.
Obama left Abbas' headquarters without speaking to reporters. But on Tuesday, he had cautioned it is "unrealistic to expect that a US president alone can suddenly snap his fingers and bring about peace in this region."
Later in the afternoon, he returned to Jerusalem to meet Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and then flew by helicopter to the southern town of Sderot -- the target of frequent Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks.
Obama said that Israel had every right to defend itself against attacks on its civilians. "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing," he said.
He referred again to the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran as "game-changing," with profound negative repercussions across the globe. "A nuclear Iran would be a game-changing situation, not just in the Middle East, but around the world," he said. "Whatever remains of our Non-Proliferation Treaty would begin to disintegrate."
"I don't think that Ms. Livni or Mr. Barak or Bibi [Opposition leader Benjamin] Netanyahu or the others, President Peres, when they spoke to me today got any sense that I would be pressuring them to accept any kinds of concession that would put their security at stake," he said in response to a question posed by a journalist.
Later this afternoon he will helicopter back to Jerusalem to meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
A senior Jerusalem official noted that Olmert will brief Obama on a range of issues, including Iran and the state of the negotiations with the Palestinians and with Syria.
The source said Olmert intends to give Obama a full picture of Israeli intelligence vis-a-vis Iran, stressing the need to take rapid action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capability.
After arriving at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Tuesday, Obama condemned an attack a few hours earlier by an Arab tractor driver who went on a rampage on a Jerusalem street not far from the King David Hotel where Obama was to stay. The driver smashed into a bus, overturned a car and seriously injured an Israeli before being shot dead by a civilian and a police officer. "It's just one more reminder why we have to work diligently, urgently and in a unified way to defeat terrorism," Obama said. "There are no excuses."
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