Obama Pledges New Aid to Palestinians Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
at the White House on Wednesday.  By HELENE COOPER and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: June 9, 2010

WASHINGTON — President Obama urged the Israeli government to loosen its
blockade of Gaza on Wednesday, as the United States continued to scramble
to find a way out of the stalemate in the Middle East and address the
outcry over Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla last week.

Mr. Obama, meeting with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas,
at the White House, also promised a $400 million aid package for the
West Bank and Gaza, though only about $70 million represented a new
commitment. White House officials said the money would be spent on
housing, schools, efforts to provide access to drinking water and other
health and infrastructure projects.

The details of how the aid would be used in Gaza remained unclear. Nor
was it immediately clear how Mr. Abbas, who has authority in the West
Bank but not in Gaza, would be able to administer it.

Gaza has faced an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007. An Israeli
raid that thwarted a Turkish-led flotilla carrying aid and activists
toward Gaza last week intensified international protests over the
blockade, which Mr. Obama has called “unsustainable.” Israel
contends that the blockade is necessary to prevent the smuggling of
arms to Hamas, the militant Islamist organization that governs Gaza and
opposes Israel’s existence.

Administration officials and their European allies have been pressing
the Israeli government to partly lift the blockade to allow a freer flow
of nonmilitary goods.

“We, and I think President Abbas agrees with this, recognize that Israel
should not have missiles flying out of Gaza into its territories,”
Mr. Obama said Wednesday. “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,” the president added, “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 hardheaded discussions with the Israelis in achieving that.”

Mr. Obama said that “there should be some 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.”

In the past few days, Israel has added juice and preserves to the basic
supplies it allows into Gaza but has denied that this signaled any change
in policy as a result of international pressure. An Israeli security
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under army rules,
said the broadening of the list of supplies was “the continuation of
a process” that had been going on for months.

International organizations working in Gaza have warned of growing
hardship. Deprived of raw materials, local industry has been severely
damaged, and the Gaza economy has collapsed.

“It is not enough to permit Gaza residents to purchase Israeli-made
cookies,” Gisha, an advocacy group that focuses on freedom of movement
for Palestinians, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Israel should
stop banning raw materials such as industrial margarine and glucose,
so that Gaza residents can produce their own cookies and restart the
economy that has been paralyzed for three years.”

Mr. Obama is trying to steer Palestinians back to the negotiating table
with Israelis, while at the same time trying to persuade Israelis that
the United States and his administration have Israel’s best interests
at heart.

Many Israelis blame Mr. Obama for Mr. Abbas’s refusal so far to engage
in direct negotiations. When Mr. Obama demanded last year that Israel
freeze construction of settlements in the West Bank, a demand that Israel
refused, many Palestinian officials said afterward that they could not
go ahead with direct negotiations. But in the past, Palestinians had
often entered direct negotiations with Israel absent such a freeze.

Mr. Abbas is still seeking some sort of gesture, either from the
Americans or from the Israelis, administration officials said, before
he will enter direct negotiations.

“The Palestinian position is that we’ve been engaged with
Mitchell,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former negotiator with the
Palestinian Authority, referring to Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy,
George J. Mitchell. “We’ve given position papers to Mitchell. We
don’t have a problem with moving to direct talks, but before that the
Israelis have to present their positions to the administration.”

Israeli officials counter that they do not want to offer their positions
before direct talks begin, because that would be akin to negotiating
against themselves.

After Mr. Obama’s meeting with Mr. Abbas, the White House put out a
statement that “the president has described the situation in Gaza as
unsustainable, and it demands a significant change in strategy.”

The statement said that “while we work with our partners in the
Palestinian Authority, Israel, Egypt and the international community to
put such a strategy in place, these projects represent a down payment on
the United States’ commitment to Palestinians in Gaza, who deserve a
better life and expanded opportunities, and the chance to take part in
building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those
who live in the West Bank.”

Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from
Jerusalem.