Obama said on Wednesday that his administration did not block a UN resolution on Israeli settlement activity last month because it felt a two-state solution was the only option for peace.
"The goal of the resolution was to simply say that the ... growth of the settlements are creating a reality on the ground that increasingly will make a two-state solution impossible," he said.
"It was important for us to send a signal, a wakeup call that this moment may be passing."
Obama defended his administration’s rapprochement with Cuba and his move to end the "wet foot, dry foot" policy that lets any Cuban who makes it to US soil stay and become a legal resident.
Ending the visa-free path was the latest development in a warming of relations that has included the easing of the US economic embargo and the restoration of commercial flights between the two countries.
"That was a carry-over of an old way of thinking that didn’t make sense in this day and age, particularly as we’re opening up travel between the two countries," Obama said of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy.
Obama also defended his decision to cut nearly three decades off convicted leaker Chelsea Manning’s prison term on Wednesday, arguing that the former army intelligence analyst had served a "tough prison sentence" already.
He said he granted clemency to Manning because she had gone to trial, taken responsibility for her crime and received a sentence that was harsher than other leakers had received.
He emphasized that he had merely commuted her sentence, not granted a pardon, which would have symbolically forgiven her for the crime.
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