‘Hamas doesn’t want peace’

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton defended Israel and blasted the terrorist organization Hamas on Wednesday at a Harris-Waltz presidential campaign in Michigan.

Clinton reminded the audience that the Israeli residents near the Gaza border who were massacred by Hamas on Oct. 7 last year were among the strongest supporters for a peaceful two-state solution.

“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,” Clinton said. “Hamas doesn’t want peace.”

The former Democratic president addressed common grievances against the Jewish state.

“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?” Clinton asked the audience. “You would say, ‘You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not keeping score that way.'”

While Clinton lamented the large number of Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza since last October, he argued that it was the result of Hamas’ cynical strategy of using civilians as human shields, which constitutes a war crime under international law.

“They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself,” the former U.S. president assessed.

Clinton, who served as president from 1993 to 2001, played a pivotal role in advancing Middle East peace efforts during the 1990s, leading to the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Toward the end of his presidential tenure in 2000, Clinton hosted former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat at what became known as the Camp David peace summit. However, peace did not materialize and Clinton later blamed Arafat for rejecting a peace agreement, which would have resulted in a two-state solution with Jerusalem as a shared capital.

“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,” Clinton recalled. “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 told the Harris-Walz campaign attendees.

The former U.S. president noted that the nation of Israel and its historical ties to its ancestral homeland predate Islam.

“Well, I’ve got news for them. They were there before their faith existed.”

“This [conflict] is far more complicated than you know, and all I ask you to do is keep an open mind,” Clinton concluded.

In 2023, the Israel State Archives declassified documents revealing that the former Israeli Barak government was indeed prepared to divide Jerusalem and make extensive territorial concessions that aligned with Clinton’s peace vision.

“The Israeli government unanimously accepted President Clinton’s ideas as a basis for continuing negotiations towards a framework agreement for a permanent status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians,” recalled Gilad Sher, who headed Barak’s office at the time.