Israel: Obama Meets Abbas After Rocket Blast

President Barack Obama has told Palestinians they deserve an "independent and sovereign" state during his visit to the West Bank.

Mr Obama's trip to Ramallah was bookended by stark reminders of the tensions in the region as Palestinian militants fired rockets across the border and Iran threatened to destroy two Israeli cities.

The President held talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and told a news conference that the US is "deeply committed" to a two-state solution, but the only way to achieve it is through negotiation.

Mr Obama said that Israel's ongoing settlement building was unhelpful to the pursuit of peace but urged the Palestinians not to make halting the policy a precondition for negotiations.

He said: "We do not consider continued settlement activity to be constructive, to be appropriate, to be something that can advance the cause of peace."

President Abbas said that peace with Israel should not be achieved through violence, occupation, settlements, arrests or denial or refugee rights.

There have been angry protests ahead of Mr Obama's Ramallah visit

Later, Mr Obama told an audience of students in Jerusalem that Syria's President Bashar al Assad "must go, so Syria's future can begin" and earned cheers when he described Hezbollah as a "terrorist organisation."

In Iran, the country's supreme leader was warning that it would "annihilate" the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa if it comes under attack by the Jewish state.

In a live televised speech from the holy city of Mashhad, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: "Every now and then the leaders of the Zionist regime threaten Iran with a military attack.

"They should know that if they commit such a blunder, the Islamic Republic will annihilate Tel Aviv and Haifa."

The rockets fired from Gaza, a reminder of heightened tensions in the region, caused damage to land around a house in southern Israel, but there were no injuries.

A police expert clears the remains of a rocket from outside a Sderot house

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said: "One exploded in the back yard of a house in Sderot, causing damage, and the second landed in a field."

Military officials cited by army radio said they believed the attack was timed deliberately to coincide with Mr Obama's visit.

Israel pointed the finger for the attacks at Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, although a small Islamist group later claimed responsibility in an online statement.

The Magles Shoura al-Mujahddin said it fired the rockets to show that Israeli air defences could not stop attacks during the visit, Reuters reported.

President Obama - who visited the town where the rockets landed as a presidential candidate in 2008 - was miles away in Jerusalem at the time, preparing to visit the Israel Museum.

Mr Obama reaffirmed US support for Israel during talks in Jerusalem

There were protesters outside the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah ahead of his arrival for talks with Palestinian leaders, who have accused him of riding roughshod over their hopes of statehood.

Sky News Middle East Correspondent Sam Kiley said settlements and the controversial "right of return" for Palestinians to their former lands in Israel would be on the agenda.

He added: "The crucial thing is for President Obama to get back into the peace process."

Code Red sirens wailed in Sderot shortly after the rockets hit at 7am, forcing commuters and schoolchildren to run to bomb shelters.

Yossi Haziza, a Sderot resident in whose courtyard the first rocket exploded, was looking at the walls of his home sprayed with shrapnel and shattered windows.

He said: "I wish this was merely damage to property but my eight-year-old daughter and my wife are terrified. We just want to live in peace. We don't want to keep having to run to bomb shelters."

Mr Obama, on the first foreign trip of his second term, says he has come to the Holy Land simply "to listen" to the parties about how to resume peace talks frozen for two-and-a-half years.

He said he decided against coming with a comprehensive peace plan that might not be fit for current political conditions.

The US President's new approach was in stark contrast to early in his first term, when he declared Israeli settlement building to be illegitimate and promised to dedicate himself to peace.

Meanwhile, Palestinian activists set up a protest camp on West Bank land east of Jerusalem where Israel has announced controversial plans to build, demanding an end to Obama's "bias and support for Israel".

Israel's plan to build thousands of new settler homes in an area called E1 has sparked a major international backlash, with experts saying it could wipe out hopes for a viable Palestinian state.

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