At Thursday’s news conference in Ramallah, following talks with President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama said: “”That’s not to say settlements aren’t important, that’s to say if we resolve the main problems, then settlements will be resolved.”

“If the only way to begin the conversation we have to get everything right from the outset … then we’re never going to get to the broader issue, which is how do you structure a state of Palestine,” Obama added.

In response to Obama’s remarks Abbas did not openly call for a settlement freeze as a precondition for negotiations, though he didn’t say the opposite either.

Illegal settlements have been the major obstacle to all negotiations as Israel refused Palestinians’ demands to stop construction of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem despite settlements being illegal under the fourth Geneva convention and being in defiance of UN resolutions.

At the beginning of Obama’s speech in Ramallah, the president said that the United States was “deeply committed” to creating a sovereign state of Palestine.

Obama is on his first visit to the close U.S. ally Israel as president.

After a trip to the West Bank, where he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas he spoke to Israeli students in Jerusalem. saying that continued settlement activity was “counterproductive” to peace, and that the Palestinians had a right to self-determination, Reuters reported.

But he also insisted that now was the time for the Arab world to start normalizing relations with the Jewish state, according to the news agency.

After he leaves Israel on Friday, Obama is scheduled to visit Jordan