More on SecState Hillary's views....
In answering a question, Clinton went into some detail about the problems facing a two-state solution and peace. Remember she is speaking extemporaneously.
First, the Israeli perception:
"I think Israelis have good grounds to be suspicious. And I would never be one who tries to rewrite or dismiss history. The Palestinians could have had a state as old as I am if they had made the right decision in 1947. They could have had a state if they had worked with my husband and then-Prime Minister Barak at Camp David. They could have had a state if they’d worked with Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Minister Livni."
Here Clinton is pointing out that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected getting a state and that’s why they didn’t have one years ago. I cannot imagine Obama saying this kind of thing.
"Now, would it have been a perfectly acceptable outcome for every Israeli and every Palestinian? No. No compromise ever is. But there were moments of opportunity. And I will also say this. When Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month settlement freeze I flew to Jerusalem. We’d been working on this. George Mitchell had been taking the lead on it. And when Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month settlement freeze, it wasn’t perfect. It didn’t cover East Jerusalem, but it covered much of the contested area in the West Bank."
There’s something important in this passage that no one has noticed. For the first time ever, Clinton publicly and explicitly acknowledged that the freeze did not cover East Jerusalem. Why, then, did Vice President Joe Biden throw a temper tantrum when an Israeli zoning board cleared some future construction there? At the time, the U.S. government repeatedly implied that Israel violated the agreement, which it didn’t. Now Clinton admits that.
Incidentally, the Obama administration did nothing when the Palestinian Authority refused to negotiate seriously despite the freeze on construction.
Clinton continued, and this is also revealing:
"And I stood on a stage with him at 11 o’clock – Israelis always meet late at night, I don’t understand it – (laughter) – but 11 o’clock at night, midnight, and I said it was unprecedented for any Israeli prime minister to have done that. I got so criticized. I got criticized from the right, the left, the center, Israeli, Jewish, Arab, Christian, you name it. Everybody criticized me. But the fact was it was a 10-month settlement freeze. And he was good to his word. And we couldn’t get the Palestinians into the conversation until the tenth month."
Rubin then adds the infamous paragraph LFTC quoted recently:
"I’m not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion. So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished."
BR finds four faults: (a) Hillary names no "missed opportunities" by Israel re peace; (b) she gives no examples of lack of Israeli generosity; (c) she offers none re lack of Israeli empathy; (d) she implies that Israelis, rather than the Palestinian & other Arab leaders, are the oppressors.
Put simply, Hillary's last paragraph seems to come from someone not at all like the person who spoke the paragraphs sympathetic to Israel & critical of Palestinian perfidy. There is no logical reconciliation between the twin personas of our SecState.
A political one--as good as any--is Rubin's: Hill exemplifies the attitude white liberals have re Israel & America: an abiding distrust of both.
Bottom Line. Just as Team Obama's Israel policy is schizoid--helpful re military & defense, versus diplomatic hectoring & pressing for unilateral concessions--so our SecState is, apparently, terminally conflicted.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, National Security, Foreign Policy, Conservative Politics
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