Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas came to his White House meeting with President George W. Bush carrying several messages, the most important being that the Palestinians have fulfilled the vast majority of their phase one road map obligation and that Israel was blocking further progress. Speaking at a 31 July 2003 Palestine Center briefing, Diana Buttu, a legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (
PLO) Negotiations Affairs Department, said Abbas emphasized to Bush three issues that were impeding progress on the road map: Israel’s construction of an apartheid wall, Israel’s continued settlement expansion, and the incarceration of several thousand Palestinian political prisoners.
