"And I understand the security considerations as well as anyone, but the
obligation was undertaken to improve the lives of Palestinians and we're
going to have to work very hard if we're going to make that true in a
broader sense."

Remarks to the Traveling Press
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
En route Tel Aviv, Israel
June 14, 2008
www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2008/06/105910.htm

SECRETARY RICE: Okay. Look, why don't we just go directly to questions. You
heard the President's press conference today, and we're now headed to
Jerusalem, so we can just go directly to your questions.

QUESTION: Can you respond to the -- Israel's announcement yesterday, I
believe, of a new 1,300 home settlement in East Jerusalem, and how you
expect to be able to, you know, talk to both sides about this since that's
precisely the thing that the Palestinians regard as the greatest obstacle?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it will certainly be a topic of conversation and I
expect to raise it with all of Israel's officials and leaders. And we've
said before that this is a time to try and build confidence, and this is
simply not helpful to building confidence. And so we'll have a further
discussion of it, but I intend to have a discussion of Roadmap obligations
generally, and this is obviously a Roadmap obligation that's not being met.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, you are not annoyed that every time you go
there, there is a new announcement of settlements, either just before you
come or just after you leave?

SECRETARY RICE: Unfortunately, there have been a few whether I'm coming or
not. I think that - look, it's a problem. And I think it's a problem that we'e - that I'm going to address with the Israelis. And it's also - as the
President said today, it's also every reason - or it gives us every reason
that we really ought to be determining the boundaries of the state, because
what's in Israel will be in Israel at that point, and what's in Palestine
will be in Palestine. And that's the best way to resolve this, but you know,
I repeat, we've talked a great deal about the importance of Roadmap
obligations, and this one isn't being met.

QUESTION: Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad this week expressed remarkable
pessimism in public, saying he just didn't think it was possible to get a
peace agreement this year. Why is it? What makes you think it's possible in,
you know, seven months now?

SECRETARY RICE: Because I know that the parties are working very seriously
and they're talking about the most serious of issues. It's not easy, and
these issues have never been easy. It's the reason they don't have an end to
their conflict. It's because the issues are hard. I know that there are
those who talk about the difficulties of this particular moment. I'm
hard-pressed to find a time when there weren't difficult circumstances in
the Middle East.

And so the parties, I think, are intending to keep pressing. I've talked to
the negotiators, to Foreign Minister Livni and to Abu Allah. I've talked to
Prime Minister Olmert and to President Abbas. They expressed the desire to
get this done. And we're going to work as hard as possible with them to get
it done. But I do think it's important for everyone to stay focused on the
goal and stay focused on the work at hand, rather than several months before
the end of the year, trying to determine what the outcome is going to be,
and expressing pessimism. I don't think it helps to express pessimism at
this point. There's hard work ahead, but it helps to focus on the work.

And I should - just on Prime Minister Fayyad, he is focusing very intently
on the -- as he puts it, creating the institutions of a nascent state. And
that's why we're supporting him in the work he's doing to build the security
forces, the Jenin Project, the Bethlehem conference. On a number of these
scores, he has had a lot of support and I think he's done really very well.
And so I'll also have an opportunity to talk about what is another track of
Annapolis. The negotiations are one track, but the - improving the lives of
the Palestinians and building the institutions of the Palestinian state is
another track, and that's the one in which I'm most involved with Prime
Minister Fayyad.

QUESTION: You're going this time, just about on the one-year anniversary of
the Hamas takeover in Gaza. Were you concerned the other day to see some
Israeli military officials say that they would give the truce talks in Egypt
about two weeks to work or they would reinvade? And where do you see that
truce situation - the truce negotiations going at this point?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I'm not going to comment on every comment that is made
by Israeli officials, either identified or not in - about the Gaza
situation. Everybody knows that the situation in Gaza is extremely
difficult, that Hamas has - is effectively holding the population of Gaza
hostage, that they are continuing to participate in and allow others to
participate in firing rockets against innocent Israeli populations. And we
all know too that the Egyptians are trying mightily to find a solution.

So I - this is something that the Israelis are dealing directly with the
Egyptians on, and so I'm not in a position to comment about the
back-and-forth between Israel and Egypt. But I think we all know what needs
to happen in Gaza. The rocket fire needs to stop. There needs to be a more
sustainable circumstance for the people of Gaza, meaning that there will
need to be sustained openings of the crossings, enough at least to permit
humanitarian conditions to - humanitarian needs to be met. And ultimately, I
would hope that they can get back to something that looks more like the
Movement and Access Agreement of November 2005, which everybody's focused on
as an endpoint.

So we know that that's what needs to be done in Gaza, and it's my
understanding that Egypt and Israel are both focusing there as well as the
Palestinians. I just want to repeat that the Palestinian Authority, of
course, is the legitimate authority for the people of Gaza as well. They
spend some 58 percent of their budget on the people of Gaza, so it's not as
if the Palestinian Authority is not involved concerning affairs in Gaza. And
I should mention one other point, which is, of course, we've worked with the
Egyptians on some technical ways to deal with the smuggling through tunnels
and the like. The Egyptians are very concerned about the security situation
in Gaza and about the use of Gaza's territory for rearming of terrorists. It's
not in Egypt's interest either.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, what do you think about President Assad
attending the celebrations of Bastille Day next month in Paris?

SECRETARY RICE: As I understand it, a lot of people are going to attend the
celebration of Bastille Day. My understanding, and we had long discussions
with the French, this is in accord - it's in conjunction with the
Mediterranean summit that they hold, which, as I understand it, is about
trying to make relations among the states of the Mediterranean more
harmonious, has more of an economic and practical caste to it than a
political caste.

But I also know that the - we and the French have completely consonant views
on the situation in Lebanon, as evidenced by - evidenced by the joint
statement that President Sarkozy and Bush issued today. We have consonant
views on the Annapolis process and what needs to be done there. President
Sarkozy will be going to Israel, I think at the end of the week. And then we
certainly have very similar views about what needs to be done in the Middle
East in total. So I don't have any doubt that any contacts with Bashar
al-Assad will be, from our point of view, contacts that communicate the
right messages in what are shared French and American goals and objectives
for the Middle East.

QUESTION: You talked about the importance of deciding on the borders because
that's one way of -- and I wonder if you've given any serious thought to the
possibility of trying to reach an agreement just on borders.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, part of the difficulty in negotiations like this is
that the issues are intertwined. You know, borders and security, issues
concerning Jerusalem, and issues concerning borders, and issues concerning
refugees -- they're all part -- and by the way, not only the big four of
final status, but also issues of state-to-state relations, issues of
economic relations. They're all very intertwined. And I believe the parties
have adopted the right strategy here, which is that they work on all of
them, recognizing that some may move more quickly than others, but also
recognizing that nothing can be agreed till everything is agreed.

And it's just very difficult to imagine a circumstance under which you could
separate somehow the border issue from these other important issues. That
doesn't mean that you can't work on the border issue separate from the
others, but it's hard to imagine that you could really resolve it without
dealing with the companion issues.

QUESTION: I'd heard that you were thinking of this, and it made no sense to
me, which is why I wondered.

SECRETARY RICE: No, I was not thinking of that. I've encouraged the parties
not to hesitate to push ahead if something is moving, but the idea that you
could have a separate agreement, I think that just doesn't make sense.

QUESTION: The Israeli political situation has probably gotten even more
complicated since you were there last. And I know you don't like to comment
on internal politics, but you're going to be seeing sort of a lot of the
relevant parties here. To what extent are you concerned that their own
internal political positionings and so forth will make things difficult for
you to have a receptive ear?

SECRETARY RICE: I can only go on what I've been told by all of the relevant
parties, as you call them, which is that they're committed to the Annapolis
process, they're committed to trying to move the negotiations forward,
they're committed to trying to meet Israel's obligations under the various
tracks of Annapolis. And I will treat the parties in their respective roles:
prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister. Those are the meetings
that I'm having. And we'll have an opportunity to talk about moving forward
on the peace process and moving forward on Israel's obligations. And you
know, as I said, the Middle East is never uncomplicated, so best just to
focus on the task at hand.

QUESTION: Do you still plan trilaterals?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: And also, do you want to speak about the roadblocks again, or it's
something that is (inaudible)?

SECRETARY RICE: I am having a trilateral with -- I think the -- is it the
Barak -- I'm trying to remember the order. I think Barak and Fayyad is
tomorrow, and Livni and Abu Alaa is Monday, I believe. And yes, in the
trilateral that is really about Roadmap implementation and improving the
lives of the Palestinians, we will talk about movement and access issues.

Now, if you remember, we've tried to make this more concrete by having, for
instance, a focus on an area, like Jenin, where you have security forces
come in for the Palestinians; Israelis can then step back and allow
Palestinians to have more freedom of action. You can then just work on the
movement and access issues, as we've done between Jenin and Nablus, for
instance. And then economic projects of the kind that Prime Minister Blair
is doing and some smaller ones of the kind that USAID and the Palestinians
themselves are doing can then fill in.

And so I think this is a more concrete way to go about it because just
focusing on numbers, I mentioned to you that focusing on 50 roadblocks and
then you learn that only some proportion of them really matters to movement
and access, I don't think we want to get into a quantitative game. And so I
think this is really a better way of going about it.

QUESTION: A quick one on that?

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah.

QUESTION: I mean, let's not -- let's actually talk about the qualitative
issue then. Do you think, in a qualitative sense, that the Israeli
Government has made significant efforts to keep its obligations since you
announced the 50 to actually substantially improve movement and access?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, again, if you look at trying to do this by area, I do
think that there are improvements in Jenin on all of the elements,
improvements on security with the Palestinians having those -- having
responsibilities there, improvements in terms of movement and access, and
the beginnings of improvements in terms of the economic side. I am told that
there are other areas where there have been some improvements in movement
and access as well; for instance, you know rather than -- more random
stopping of vehicles rather than every vehicle, that kind of thing.

But it's not enough, and there certainly and clearly needs to be more. And I
understand the security considerations as well as anyone, but the obligation
was undertaken to improve the lives of Palestinians and we're going to have
to work very hard if we're going to make that true in a broader sense.

Okay, thank you.

2008/T17-4