Obama calls on world to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization -...

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During a trip to Israel, U.S. President Barack Obama called on the world to label Lebanon's Hezbollah a terrorist group.

This after Obama said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that continued Jewish settlement activity was not constructive and did not "advance the cause of peace".

Speaking at a joint news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama said he remained committed to the creation of an "independent, viable and contiguous" Palestinian state and had not lost hope in achieving a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

But he offered no new proposals on how to achieve that. He said his new Secretary of State John Kerry would spend a significant amount of time and energy trying to narrow the differences between the two sides as Washington tries to move them back to long-stalled direct talks.

The Palestinians say settlements are a major obstacle and cannot envision a final peace settlement while their state is cut off from Jerusalem and does not include any of the city. They have expressed disappointment that Obama appears to have dropped his first-term insistence that Israel refrain from settlement construction to improve the atmosphere for negotiations.

As Obama voiced his message, Palestinian militants in Gaza launched rockets into southern Israel. One of the rockets exploded in the courtyard of a house in Sderot early in the morning, causing damage but no injuries, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. The other landed in an open field. Sirens wailed in Sderot shortly after, forcing residents on their way to work or school to run to bomb shelters.

A small Islamist group claimed responsibility for firing rockets from the Gaza Strip at an Israeli border town during U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to the region.

The small Salafi group called Magles Shoura al-Mujahddin said in an internet statement that it fired the rockets to show that Israeli air defenses could not stop attacks on the Jewish state during Obama's visit.

Earlier, the US top man had visited Israel's national museum where he inspected the Dead Sea Scrolls, which highlight the Jewish people's ancient connection to the land that is now Israel.

On Wednesday, Obama reaffirmed the unwavering U.S. commitment to Israel's security and noted there had been no fatal attacks on Israelis from the West Bank, which is controlled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama visited the border town, which is frequently targeted by rocket attacks from the nearby Gaza Strip. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Immediately after his arrival in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured an Iron Dome battery at Ben Gurion International Airport in a vivid display of U.S. security assistance to Israel.

AP/REUTERS/LBCI

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