Friday, March 22, 2013

Rockets killing kids - an irritant to Obama

Update: Source added

Little irritants shouldn't stop peace between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the government of Gaza. Obama has an example: rockets coming through the roof and killing kids in their sleep.

Irritating, isn't it.

Obama was holding a press conference with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, West Bank. The Wall Street Journal has the full transcript.

So I think it’s important for us to work through this process, even if there are irritants on both sides. The Israelis have concerns about rockets flying into their cities last night. And it would be easy for them to say, you see, this is why we can’t have peace because we can’t afford to have our kids in beds sleeping and suddenly a rocket comes through the roof. But my argument is even though both sides may have areas of strong disagreement, may be engaging in activities that the other side considers to be a breach of good faith, we have to push through those things to try to get to an agreement — because if we get an agreement then it will be very clear what the nature of that agreement is: There will be a sovereign Palestinian state, a sovereign Jewish State of Israel.

And he continued by comparing the people who shoot rockets at civilian housing to having Canada on our border!

And those two states I think will be able to deal with each other the same way all states do. I mean, the United States and Canada has arguments once in a while, but they’re not the nature of arguments that can’t be solved diplomatically. And I think we can keep pushing through some of these problems and make sure that we don’t use them as an excuse not to do anything.

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