And the hits just keep on coming: Mother Jones Magazine released more quotes by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as said at a private fundraiser held May 17, this time deeming the Israeli-Palestinian peace process virtually impossible.
Earlier Tuesday, Mother Jones released footage of Romney at the fundraiser, criticizing voting sectors that favor President Barack Obama as “victims.”
According to NBC, the videos were exposed by the grandson of former president Jimmy Carter, James, who said his motivation was “to help get Democrats elected” and to get back at the GOP presidential nominee for his criticism of his grandfather’s presidency.
At the $50,000 a plate fundraiser held in Boca Raton, Florida, Romney spoke about of political strategy. Asked about the Palestinian issue, he answered that “The Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.”
Explaining his position, he said, “Some might say, let’s let the Palestinians have the West Bank and have security and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians. And then come a couple of thorny questions.
“The border between Israel and the West bank is right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital of Israel, the center of Israel.”
“What the border would be? Maybe seven miles from Tel Aviv to what would be the West Bank…The other side of what would be this new Palestinian state would either be Syria at one point or Jordan. And of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, what they did near Gaza. The Iranians would want to bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel.”
According to the magazine, Romney spoke of “the Palestinians” as a united bloc of one mindset: “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.
“And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and I say there’s just no way.”
Romney showed little faith that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be resolved, saying: “(So) what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem…and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”
He later stressed he was against putting any type of pressure on Israel saying it was “the worst idea in the world.”
The presidential candidate also addressed other issues on the agenda including the Iranian threat.
“If I were Iran – a crazed fanatic – I’d say let’s get a little fissile material to Hezbollah, carry it to Chicago or some other place, and then if anything goes wrong, or America starts acting up, we’ll just say, “Guess what, unless you stand down, why, we’re going to let off a dirty bomb,” he said.
The former governor then warned that the nuclear issue could enable Iran’s mullas and “crazy people” to blackmail the US. “So we really don’t have any option but to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon,” he stated.
Romney, who recently started blasting Obama on his foreign policy, did not spare his words. “The President’s foreign policy, in my opinion, is formed in part by a perception that he has this magnetism, and his charm and his persuasiveness is so compelling that he can sit down with people like Putin and Chavez and Ahmadinejad and that they’ll find that we’re such wonderful people and they’ll stop doing bad things. And it’s an extraordinarily naïve perception.”
