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Obama: Iran nukes would pose 'grave threat'
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 | Obama: Iran is a 'paramount concern' July 23: In Israel, Barack Obama says he would offer "big sticks and big carrots" to Iran in an effort to halt that country's nuclear program. MSNBC |
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 | A bagel named 'Obama' July 23: A Palestinian bakery names a bagel after U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama as a thank you for visiting the West Bank. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown has the story. msnbc.com |
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 | Race for the presidency The trips, the speeches, and the moments of Decision ’08. A look at the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain. more photos |
Trip to southern Israel
Earlier in the day, Obama met with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and parliamentary opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party takes a hard line against the Palestinians. He was to meet with Olmert in the evening, after visiting a southern Israeli town that's been bombarded by Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
A late-night tour of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, is to cap the visit.
Israeli officials said their talks with Obama included discussions about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Many Israelis are worried by Obama's willingness to talk to Tehran, the Jewish state's bitterest enemy.
Obama met with Barak and Netanyahu at Jerusalem's posh King David Hotel, where an "Israel for Obama" campaign poster was draped over an armchair in the lobby. The poster included Obama's campaign slogan — "Change you can believe in" — in Hebrew.
Some Israelis who support Obama hope he will take a stronger hand with Israel when it ignores its commitments to the U.S. to halt settlement building and dismantle settlement satellites known as outposts.
"In general, I think tough love is better than a free hand," said the head of the "Israel for Obama" campaign, Samson Altman-Schevitz. He moved to Israel two years ago from Chicago, where Obama's wife, Michelle, was his adviser at the University of Chicago.
Obama left Abbas' headquarters without speaking to reporters. But on Tuesday, he cautioned it is "unrealistic to expect that a U.S. president alone can suddenly snap his fingers and bring about peace in this region."
His meeting with the Palestinians stands in contrast to the decision by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain to visit only Israel in March, without stopping in the West Bank.
Police out in force
On the road leading to Abbas' headquarters on Wednesday, police were out in full force, standing 10 yards apart and outfitted in full battle regalia, with camouflage uniforms, helmets, bulletproof vests, and carrying truncheons and assault rifles.
The Illinois Democrat is working to shore up support among U.S. Jewish voters. Many supported Hillary Rodham Clinton in the battle for the party's presidential nomination, and some have questioned his commitment to Israel.
Obama arrived in Israel Tuesday night from neighboring Jordan and is due to leave for Germany early on Thursday.
Hours before his arrival, a Palestinian man wreaked havoc in downtown Jerusalem — several hundred yards from Obama's hotel — by plowing a front-end loader into cars and a bus. Five people were wounded before a bystander and a policeman shot him dead in the second such incident in the city in less than a month.
A spokeswoman for Yad Vashem, Estee Yaari, said at the end of his visit there, Obama met with the policeman and told him, "Oh, I thought they would have given you the day off."
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