Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/settlement-issue-looms-over-obama-abbas-meeting Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Margaret Warner reports on reactions to the meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and President Barack Obama Thursday. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. TRANSLATOR: The interest of stability in the region… MARGARET WARNER: Today it was the Palestinians turn on President Obama's busy Middle East agenda as he met with President Mahmoud Abbas in the Oval Office. U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We just completed an extensive conversation both privately as well as with our delegations. MARGARET WARNER: The meeting with Abbas follows last week's session with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. BARACK OBAMA: First of all, I want to thank Benjamin Netanyahu… MARGARET WARNER: But the 74-year-old Abbas comes to Washington profoundly weakened. He leads a divided government with the militant Islamist party, Hamas, controlling Gaza and one third of the Palestinian population. RASHID KHALIDI, Columbia University: This is, in a sense, a bird with one wing. MARGARET WARNER: Author Rashid Khalidi is a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. RASHID KHALIDI: I think that it's very clear that he doesn't represent the entirety or even a majority of his own people. So what you're dealing with is a fragment, one wing, as it were, of the Palestinian national movement.