Romney’s 2-Step Mideast Peace Policy Revealed
Mitt Romney has a two-step strategy for dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s called kick and hope. He wants to “kick the ball down the field” and “hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”
Peace will “remain an unsolved problem,” he told contributors at a private fundraiser last May, because the Palestinians really don’t really want peace but are “committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel.” His candid thoughts were revealed in a leaked video posted on Mother Jones, and can be viewed here.
In that private meeting he trashed the two-state concept which he had publicly embraced in a Haaretz interview while in Israel this summer. At that time he said, "I believe in a two-state solution which suggests there will be two states, including a Jewish state."
To a $50,000-a-head fundraiser at the Boca Raton home of a fellow private equity manager, Marc Leder, a more candid Romney said, “The idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world.”
His comments seemed to reflect the views of his billionaire benefactor, Sheldon Adelson, who has pledged $100 million to elect Romney. Adelson, the self-proclaimed “richest Jew in the world,” is an outspoken foe of Palestinian statehood and sees the peace process as a plot to destroy the Jewish state.
Romney sounded like he was channeling Adelson when he told contributors the Palestinians have "no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish." He went on to say, “I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues And I say, ‘There’s just no way.’”
He listed the dangers a Palestinian state would pose, including that “the Iranians would want to bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel.”
While in Israel this summer Romney snubbed the Israeli opposition leader as well as the Palestinian president, refused to go to Ramallah and said the Palestinians’ economy isn’t as good as Israel’s because they’re culturally inferior.
That plus his comments appeared to reinforce those who say a President Romney would contract out Mideast policy to his old Boston finance colleague Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Maybe he’ll make Bibi his secretary of state.