Former President Bill Clinton spoke at a rally in Michigan for the Harris/Walz campaign on Wednesday, where he took time to defend his work in the peace process but also to defend Israel.
Clinton started by saying, “I think we’re essentially going to have to start again on the peace process.”
He said he understood why many Palestinian and Arab Americans think too many people have died but asked them to consider the perspective of an Israeli living on the Gaza border.
“The people there were the most pro-friendship with Palestine, the most pro-two state solution of any of the Israeli communities, were the ones right next to Gaza, and Hamas butchered them.”
“The people who criticize [Israel] are essentially saying, ‘Yeah, but look how many people you’ve killed in retaliation, so how many is enough to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?'”
“That all sounds nice until you realize. What would you do if it was your family and you hadn’t done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians, and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village?”
“You would say, ‘You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not keeping score that way.'”
Clinton then said it wasn’t about how many had been killed but about the fact that Hamas ensures that civilians will die in response, “They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.”
Previous peace work
Clinton then addresses his own work to bring peace in the Middle East, saying, “Look, I worked on this hard.”
“The only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was when he told me he was going to accept the peace deal that we had worked out.”
He reiterated that his deal would have created peace and that the terms were favorable to the Palestinians.
“It would have given the Palestinian a state in 96% of the West Bank and the remaining 4% from Israel, and they got to choose where that 4% in Israel was.”
“They would have a capital in east Jerusalem and two of the four quadrants of the Old City of Jerusalem. They would have equal access, all day, every day, to the security towers that Israel maintains all through the West Bank.”
Clinton said that Ehud Barak and his cabinet had approved this deal, “and the Palestinians said no.”
Clinton said that he believed part of the reason for this rejection was that Hamas didn’t actually want a Palestinian state but wanted to kill Israelis.
“Well, I’ve got news for them. They were there before their faith existed.”
Referring to Israeli political infighting, he said, “The whole fight that you have seen play out was present in the beginning.”
“Two parties, Likud and Labor. Likud says we want the whole West Bank because we had it in the time of David, and to heck with whoever came later. Labor said we will take what the United Nations has offered us and we will make a garden in the desert and we will have friends and we will work through it. They’re still fighting this fight.”
“Here’s what I’m gonna do everything I can to convince people that they cannot murder their way out of this, neither side. You can’t kill your way out of this.”
He then addressed the issue of protest voting, saying that not voting because the Biden administration has upheld the US’s historic commitment to prevent the destruction of Israel would be a mistake.
He said that he didn’t think Donald Trump’s ideas would help Israel, saying, “We have to find a way to share the future; we cannot kill our way out of conflicts. But we do have to fight our way to safety.”
He said that Iran and its coalition of proxy groups were not good for the Palestinian people.
Clinton recalled a meeting between Arafat and Barak where Arafat said that Barak “cares much more about Palestinian children than the Arabs do. They only care about us when their people are upset, and they need to blame the US and Israel.”
“This [conflict] is far more complicated than you know, and all I ask you to do is keep an open mind,” he said finishing off the speech.
