Former US President Bill Clinton did an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the 2024 New York Times DealBook Summit, where he shared his thoughts on Israel, the ongoing peace process with the Palestinian Arabs, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he suggested had been given a “lifeline” after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
When asked how long he believed Netanyahu would remain in office, Clinton responded, “Well, he’s been there longer than I thought he would be already, but once the attacks in Gaza from Hamas, it was a lifeline to Bibi. In the beginning it hurt him, because the IDF was not ready, all the fights that were going on within Israel about the rule of law and all the issues there made them more vulnerable…but he was in office, and he had a narrow parliamentary majority, and an otherwise very fragile political coalition got stronger because of what happened on October 7. And he was the commander-in-chief if you will, and he fought it back.”
Clinton continued by reflecting on the failure to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, stating, “I think what’s happened there in the last 25 years is one of the great tragedies of the 21st century.”
The former President went on to describe his conversations with young Americans who sympathize with Palestinians, explaining, “When I tell young people in America who say they are super sympathetic with the Palestinians – a lot of those Palestinians have been killed and all [these young Americans] know is there are a lot more Palestinians who have been killed than Israelis.” He continued, “And I tell them what [the late PLO leader Yasser] Arafat walked away from, and they can’t believe it.”
Clinton then explained the details of the peace agreement that was rejected, saying, “I said, ‘Oh yeah, he walked away from a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, 96% of the West Bank, 4% of Israel to make up for the 4% that the settlers occupy that were beyond the borders in the 1967 war.’ I go through all the stuff that was in the deal, and – it’s not on their radar screen. They can’t even imagine that happened.”
Reflecting on the consequences of the failure to achieve peace, Clinton stated, “The first and most famous victim of trying to give the Palestinians a state was Prime Minister [Yitzchak] Rabin. So Rabin, he dies, and then Shimon Peres is defeated in the [1996] election [by Netanyahu] and the rest is history.” He then delivered a message for the Palestinian Arabs, saying, “You walk away from these once-in-a-lifetime peace opportunities, and you can’t complain 25 years later.”
Concluding his remarks, Clinton shared a personal sentiment, saying, “I’m an old guy. Of my regrets, that’s one of them,” expressing his sorrow over the failure to bring peace to the Middle East.
{Matzav.com}
Who cares about this obsolete pile of man ure