Yesterday I talked to Sue Dravis, a former Democratic Party official in Iowa, who 11 months ago elicited the frankest, and most damaging, statement that Obama has made about Israel/Palestine, when he said that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." The comment was soon being denounced by Jewish groups around the country and was quoted by Brian Williams in a question at the first Democratic debate. Obama has run away from the statement for over a year. "It just won’t die," Dravis says.
Dravis is 42. She’s a Presbyterian and a former treasurer for the Muscatine County Democrats. She is a trainer at an office furniture company. She has a B.A. in marketing.
Her involvement with Middle East issues began several years ago through her church. Then she visited the Holy Land and was shocked. "It was just bizarre. Just bizarre. It is so incongruous to the life we live here. I went into the West Bank and there are issues of water and all the checkpoints, and people can’t get to work or visit their families. I’m not used to seeing life in a war zone."
Dravis came home determined to bear witness. She does not blame the Israelis or the Palestinians. Israel is surrounded by "hostile forces." Both sides are suffering, she says, though the situation is "imbalanced": the Israelis are more powerful than the Palestinians. "The occupation is wrong. If somebody started camping in my back yard I’d be pissed. And I’d do something about it." The U.S. has to take a decisive role in pushing a just solution. Dravis has lectured at churches and shown people her photos of Bethlehem, a cordoned city. See that father and son outside of Jesus’s birthplace–they are there selling peanuts. They live under a U.S.-backed occupation. Shouldn’t that father have greater opportunities?
Dravis has also buttonholed candidates. "After seeing the horrible things that the Israelis and Palestinians have to endure, I felt charged to go out and put this in front of the candidates because it is a taboo subject," she says. Typically candidates would say one thing in private, acknowledging Palestinian suffering, and then speak in more "measured" ways in public. Dravis wanted to puncture that hypocrisy.
Her opportunity with Obama came last March at the middle school in Muscatine. A group of 40 party insiders got a private audience with Obama in the library, then walked over with him to the auditorium for a rally. Obama was traveling that day with Tom Beaumont, a reporter for the Des Moines Register.
"Obama’s speech to AIPAC [in Chicago, the week before] is what forged my question," Dravis recalls. "It was inconsistent with what I had observed. It painted a pastoral picture of Israel. Well it’s not pastoral. It’s not safe for the Israelis, and the Palestinians are living under occupation. I said, ‘Gosh, I was over there for a couple of weeks and I would never have drawn the picture the way that you do…. I’m concerned from a humanitarian standpoint that the United States is funding an occupation. It is not safe for Israel nor good for the Palestinians.’ I was pretty emphatic but I couched it in humanitarian terms.. "
Obama gave a lengthy answer. He was evenhanded. He said that the Palestinians had to offer guarantees of security to Israel, and that the Israelis had to act to ease the suffering in the territories. He blamed Hamas, he blamed the settlements. And he said that in the interim, the Palestinians are suffering the most.
As the group left the library, Beaumont ran up to Dravis to get her name. Here is Beaumont’s original coverage of the comment (not on the DMR site; you gotta pay).
The comment produced a tremendous reaction. Obama retreated. He claimed that he was saying that Palestinians were suffering the most on account of Hamas. Two months later, the Register printed an article clarifying the interchange. The article alluded to "politically influential Jews" who had gotten upset over the statement, and then printed a transcript of Obama’s remarks, including the following:
"Israel’s going to have, you know in my speech to AIPAC (foreign policy council in Chicago) last week, I said they’re going to have some stones to carry in the road to peace. In particular, they are going to have to look at some of the settlements in the West Bank, which it’s going to be very painful for them politically to do. But they’re not going to take that extraordinarily difficult political step until they feel that they’ve got a partner on the other side.Now, in the interim, nobody’s suffering more than the Palestinian people from this whole process. And I would like to see – if we could get some movement from Palestinian leadership - what I’d like to see is a loosening up of some of the restrictions on providing aid directly to the Palestinian people.I was in the West Bank and Ramallah, and it’s very challenging. And I think you can get a sympathetic perspective both within Israel and from the U.S. and the Europeans if you have Hamas acknowledge that the road to peace is not going go through – it’s not going to go through terrorism and other violence…"
It is unimaginable to me that such innocent remarks could produce backtracking and controversy, but such is politics…
Dravis is now campaigning enthusiastically for Obama. For her, the issue of justice in Palestine is the most important issue in our politics. American evenhandedness means concern for both peoples and making Jerusalem an open city. "If any one groups wins, we’ll all lose." She says that in the months leading up to the Iowa caucuses she had two more conversations with Obama where she pressed the question and spoke too with his foreign policy people. Dravis is a nice person. Friendly, with an easy laugh. And everyone, she reports, was "nice" to her. Obama’s original answer, balanced, and yes, taken out of context, was still gratifying to her.
"I really feel that Obama deep down gets it. He realizes the inequities." As for John Edwards, his position was "naive." And Hillary? "Horrendous on this issue. She knows just what to say. She is very very measured."
I pointed out that Obama backtracked on the comment and has lately made Holocaust-drenched remarks to Jewish reporters extolling Israel and saying nothing about settlements or occupation or suffering.
"He’s not the perfect candidate," Dravis said. "The perfect candidate cannot be elected. The fight doesn’t end when he gets elected. He’s going to get just as much or more pressure from people who don’t agree with me. But he is someone I could work on and work with when elected." I think that is the most important point here. With Obama, people who think as Dravis and I do are in the conversation. Revolutionary.
Related posts:
- Republican Jews Seek to Smear Obama by Saying He Cares About Palestinian ‘Suffering’
- Obama on Palestinian Suffering
- AIPAC Speakers Call on Obama to Reject Jimmy Carter’s Endorsement (God Help Us)
- Obama must ‘address the issue of justice for Palestinians’ in Cairo
- Is pathetic Durbin statement a harbinger of Obama stance?
{ 31 comments }
Revolutionary. Yes. The First Amendment might get its first baby tooth. Next thing you know, somebody with power might start thinking about real political campaign funding reform. Take it out of the private sphere, more like in Western Europe.
Roger Cohen in his Obama column in the NYT/IHT (2/11/2008) also addressed this point:
"When Obama made an accurate statement in Iowa last year to the effect that 'Nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people', he was forced to adjust the phrase to suggest the suffering was self-inflicted."
It's good to see a 'liberal hawk' like Roger Cohen (he supported the Iraq war and still justifies it) make this statement on Obama in an internationally influential paper like the International Herald Tribune.
Since the giants USA and Israel demand the tiny Palestinians "recognize the right of Israel to exist" as a precondition to any peace negotiations, what does this condition mean? Here's a start: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0531-23.htm
This is a great blog post.
No more is needed from me on this.
Since the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel and much of the West have said that the main sticking point to any progress is the refusal of Hamas to "recognize Israel," or to "recognize Israel's existence," or to "recognize Israel's right to exist."
These words are being used as justification for collective punishment of the Palestinian people, funded by USA taxpayors from their own bankrupt nation existing on credit from Communist China. The same word phrases are also used by the mainstream media, all politicians except Ron Paul, and even our diplomats interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. They do not.
"Recognizing Israel" or any other state is a formal legal and diplomatic act by one state with respect to another state. Why is this asked of Hamas? What's the purpose of such inappropriate language?
"Recognizing Israel's existence" appears OK. But what Israel? Israel has no constitution, no borders–what Israel, within what borders, is involved? Is it the 55 % of historical Palestine recommended for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78 % of historical Palestine occupied by the Zionists in 1948? The 100 % percent of historical Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as "Israel" on maps in Israeli schoolbooks?
Demanding recognition of Israel's right to exist from Hamas (supported by Israel initially to divide and conquer the Palestinians) and Palestinians generally does not address diplomatic formalities or a simple acceptance of present realities. It calls for a moral judgment.
There is a big difference between "recognizing Israel's existence" and "recognizing Israel's right to exist." From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Nakba (the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949) is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was "right" for the Nakba to have happened would be something else, no? For the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, the Holocaust and the Nakba, respectively, represent catastrophes and injustices on an unimaginable scale that can neither be forgotten nor forgiven (though why they happened is much easier to explain is much easier to explain for the Nakba).
To demand that Palestinians recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans unworthy of basic human rights publicly proclaim that they are subhumans. It would imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them. Even 19th-century US governments did not require the surviving native Americans to publicly proclaim the "rightness" of their ethnic cleansing by European colonists as a condition precedent to even discussing what sort of land reservation they might receive. Nor did native Americans have to live under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever pride they had left and conceded the point.
Some believe that Yasser Arafat did concede the point in order to buy his ticket out of the wilderness of demonization and earn the right to be lectured directly by the Americans. But in fact, in his famous 1988 statement in Stockholm, he accepted "Israel's right to exist in peace and security." This language, significantly, addresses the conditions of existence of a state which, as a matter of fact, exists. It does not address the existential question of the "rightness" of the dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make way for another people coming from abroad due to reasons going back in european history, reasons including the reasons for WW1 and its aftermath, which set the stage for WW2).
The original conception of the phrase "Israel's right to exist" and of its use as an excuse for not talking with any Palestinian leaders who still stood up for the rights of their people are attributed to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It is highly likely that those countries that still employ this phrase do so in full awareness of what it entails, morally and psychologically, for the Palestinian people.
However, many people of goodwill and decent values may well be taken in by the surface simplicity of the words, "Israel's right to exist," and believe that they constitute a reasonable demand. And if the "right to exist" is reasonable, then refusing to accept it must represent perversity, rather than Palestinians' deeply felt need to cling to their self-respect and dignity as full-fledged human beings. That this need is deeply felt is evidenced by polls showing that the percentage of the Palestinian population that approves of Hamas's refusal to bow to this demand substantially exceeds the percentage that voted for Hamas in January 2006.
Those who recognize the critical importance of Israeli-Palestinian peace for the sanity of the whole world and truly seek a decent future for both peoples must recognize that the demand that Hamas recognize "Israel's right to exist" is unreasonable, immoral, and impossible to meet. Then, they must insist that this roadblock to peace be removed, the economic siege of the Palestinian territories be lifted, and the pursuit of peace with some measure of justice be resumed with the urgency it deserves.
I don't think its such a big issue.
Saying that Israel has a right to exist IS saying that the Jewish people are a people, and have the right to self-govern, and in mutually accepted borders within geographic Israel.
It is NOT saying that persecution is right. It is only saying that the other is a valid community.
My sense is that the reason that Hamas is unwilling to make that statement is that it gives permanence to some Israel, that the idea that at some point Israel will cease to be a Jewish state, and instead morph into a temporarily "democratic" state, followed by an Islamic state.
Their presence originates in Islam, in mosques, and although their attractive to many because of their resistance (and terror), that is a secondary reference to them, a reference that is shared by many groups from the left, to the nationalist, to the pan-Arab, to the Shia (who can stick it to Israel better?)
You are following the logic of the increasing rant, Charles, and calling it the logic of reason.
Rants are exciting, and like a car going full speed forward, imagines that its forward motion is all that is occurring. But, a pedestrian or a rodent run over, or the exhaust, or air displacement, knows that the moving forward of the car is just the artificial part, the adrenaline.
Richard Witty is dead wrong on this. The whole point of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is to formally accept second class status for non-Jews. The western promotion of such racism is deeply unfortunate, and represents, with the abandonment of the UN, in large part caused by the organizations inability to speak the truth about Israeli actions, a decisive turning point in the development of western culture.
so where is this new non asshole israel lobby? the soros /weiss one
Likud's definition of Israel's borders
_____
One should note that the Likud charter defines the state of Israel as being between the Jordan River and the Mediterranian sea. – According to an article in the International Herald Tribune.
The article had first said that the charter defined Israel on both sides of the Jordan. The IHT printed this correction on 9/20/2006:
"A front-page article Sept.12 … misstated a provision of the charter of the Líkud party in Israel regarding Israel's borders. The charter defines the Jordan River as the eastern border of Israel and does not call for an Israel on both banks of the Jordan, though some early participants and leaders in the party took that position."
Don't tell Richard about that, Klaus. He seems to be under the impression that there are "mutually accepted borders."
:)
Re: "I don't think its such a big issue."
Then why is it trotted out immediately by every American politician when asked directly or indirectly about the Palestinian suffering? Further, American tax money going to Israel instead of here at home is a big issue to aware Americans. Between the bribe to Egypt (to not offend Israel) and the dole in upfront cash and "loans" to Israel, the beneficiary, it's a big issue too. We borrow from China at compound interest to give it to that bulk of foreign aid. I won't even mention what the Iraq War costs, and why we are there.
RE: "Rants are exciting, and like a car going full speed forward, imagines that its forward motion is all that is occurring. But, a pedestrian or a rodent run over, or the exhaust, or air displacement, knows that the moving forward of the car is just the artificial part, the adrenaline."
Exactly the point: The Palestinians don't take much to being Likud's collateral damage. Let's give the foreign aid to Israel to Katrina victims. Give the foreign aid to Egypt to our military veterans. That will leave about half to countries that really need it due to utter poverty.
I have to admit it takes a lot of balls for a German to make comments about this, but I guess if the swastika fits…..
"I have to admit it takes a lot of balls for a German to make comments about this, but I guess if the swastika fits….."
Right – only Jews can discuss these things. Us goyim are just supposed to fund Israel, and Egypt (as long as they don't invade Israel), and Jordan (as long as they don't invade Israel)…
Yeah got it.
Thanks!
Wasn't talking about a piece of shit anti-semitic scumbag like you. I was referring to the kraut from Frankfurt.
Hey, anyone want to come with me to Beirut for the asshole's funeral? That place is gonna be what we call a target rich environment!
Charles,
The point is that for a Hamas that desires a sovereign Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, it is not a big deal.
It is a big deal for a Hamas that wants a temporary "democratic" state in all of mandatory Palestine, to transition quickly to an Islamic state.
Hamas agenda is a truly theocratic one, one worth opposing. And, in no uncertain terms it seeks to conquer.
The best alternative is two healthy democratic national states, permanently accepting each other's existence and basis of existence.
Maybe it hasn't gotten to you yet 'sword of gideon' – WW II is over.
Klaus, Ed, Keating, American Goy. You better get your flight to Beirut for the funeral of that scumbag who got blown up in Damascus today. After all, an Arab that kills Americans, that's got to be your kind of guy. Youhave to pay your respects,
Superb journalism by Weiss, and superb citizenship by Dravis.
Thank you both!
Michael Blaine
http://www.rudelystamped.blogspot.com
"Klaus, Ed, Keating, American Goy. You better get your flight to Beiruit…"
Your enemies list is growing, peanut of gideon. Now when are you going to jump your own flight to Israel?
"After all, an Arab that kills Americans…"
Don't pretend to care about Americans. You're a Zionist. Zionists care about themselves, and themselves only. Americans be damned. Again, peanut of gideon, why are you pretending to be an American? You're a Zionist. The two concepts are mutually exclusive. Aliya, little gideon. Aliya. Don't be such a coward.
Ed. I liked you better when you weren't such a coward. Get off the zionist stuff, You mean JEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and you know it. so get going to Lebanon to your Hezbollah pep rally. I would think its right up your alley
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-jewish-genocide-denial.html points out the political use of demonization of Islam during the 19th century.
Witty uses the same logic to argue that ethnic Ashkenazim had the right to steal Palestine from the native population.
Fabricating a Jewish ethnonationality is part of the justification for Zionist crimes.
In point of fact it was fairly normal for ethnic Ashkenazi historians of the late 19th century to argue like Israel Abrahams that non-Ashkenazi Jews "were not Jews like us (zeynen nit yidn vi mir)."
The self-indoctrination continues. See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/02/attacking-shohat-falsifying-jewish.html . Philologos neither responded nor did he apologize to Ella Shohat.
In any case, even if Jews were an ethnonational group, the identity does not give Jews the right to commit plunder, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine, and it is hard to see how Palestinian, Arabs, Muslims and decent people in general could establish a reasonable modus vivendi with a group that bases its identity in such crimes.
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/little-house-big-role-2008.html suggests that we should perhaps transcend or distrust Zionist propaganda in thinking about Islam.
Does it make sense to believe that Islam is the source of Arab or Muslim violence while Jewish Zionists or Americans murder or incinerate Arab countries out of civilized principles?
A people themselves define who they are.
Your use of the term "fabricating a Jewish ethnicity", is false, and racist.
Zionism is a good in the world. It is the affirmation that the Jewish people are not subordinate, but peer, not governed but self-governing.
Palestinians deserve similarly.
The repitition, "the land was stolen", is partially true, but barely. Its not true enough to base war on, nor resistance, nor propaganda.
Zionist clowns, Zionist clowns
Can't trust them Arabs
Up is down
Right is left
And wrong is right
A Zionist clown wants to schmooze you tonight.
Peanut brains in full paid roles
towing the line, tow boys, tow
Zionist clowns can't open their eyes
Wear American makeup, what a disguise.
All they want is Uncle Sam's cheese
so Kosher Jim Crow can keep choppin down trees,
Stealing boys' goats and clusterbombing the breeze,
Assassinating and demolishing and talking bout peace.
Zionist clowns
And their temporary state
today "Israel"
yesterday mandate
tomorrow no more room for supremacist punks,
willfully ignorant giving cover for weapons dealers and power drunks.
One person one vote scares Zionist clowns
Gotta keep em separate, unequal, and down
So there's more land to grab
More contracts to sign
More to ask Uncle Sam for,
on the taxpayers dime.
More for more's sake, or else things'll be tight
Man, them Zionist clowns
got voracious appetites.
RE: "Hamas agenda is a truly theocratic one, one worth opposing. And, in no uncertain terms it seeks to conquer."
Divinely guided? Seeks to conquer? Less so than Israel's right-wing agenda?
Recently in the Jerusalem Post an Israeli official said, "The next logical step for the Israeli government will have to be a decision whether to target the top political leadership" of Hamas. Tzahi Hanegbi (chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee) said, "There's no difference between those who wear a suicide suit and a diplomat's suit." Following a cabinet meeting on 10 February, Shimon Sheetrit (Israel's Interior Minister) specifically called for the execution of Ismail Haniyeh, the democratically-elected Hamas prime minister, and added that for good measure "We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map." Last September, Yossi Alpher ((a former special adviser to Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak when the latter was prime minister) wrote an article advocating "decapitating the Hamas leadership, both military and 'civilian.'" He worried that Israel would "pay a price in terms of international condemnation," for "targeting legally elected Hamas officials who won a fair election," but that overall it would be well worth it. Israel executed Hamas' elderly, quadriplegic and wheelchair-bound co-founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 2004, followed shortly afterwards by the execution his successor as the movement's leader, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
Who else besides Israel and the USA openly debate assination as a policy option? Last December, Haaretz reported that Hamas had secured the agreement of all factions to end rocket fire on Israel, provided Israel reciprocated. Hamas was also engaged in indirect negotiations for the release of Palestinian political prisoners in exchange for an Israeli prisoner of war held in Gaza.
Olmert rejected the December ceasefire offer. "The State of Israel," he said, "has no interest in negotiating with entities that do not recognize the Quartet demands." In other words there could be no ceasefire until Hamas unilaterally accepted all of Israel's demands before negotiations could even begin.
A "senior Israeli security official" told Haaretz that "There's no doubt that Hamas is capable of forcing a let-up on Islamic Jihad and the other small factions in the Strip … It won't be a 100 percent decrease, but even 98 percent would be a big change." ("Olmert rejects Hamas cease-fire offer," Haaretz, 25 December 2007)
If even Israel believed that Hamas could reliably enforce a truce, why does it refuse to accept one? Why has it refused to engage with Hamas, as American and British policy-makers did with the IRA?
Is it because for Israel the potential that Hamas could turn to politics presents a threat, not an opportunity? Because Israel has no interest in facing Palestinian leaders who are at once committed to basic Palestinian rights, capable of delivering, and enjoy popular legitimacy and support?
Instead of engaging with Hamas, the US and Israel announced a complete boycott intended to turn the Palestinian population against the Hamas movement. And the peace process show relaunched in Annapolis last November, followed by the international donors meeting in Paris where pledges of cash were showered on the Palestinian Authority to elevate the unelected, Israeli-backed Ramallah "government" of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad in the eyes of Palestinians. With this renewed patronage and prestige, Abbas and company were to be pushed to sign a deal giving up Palestinian refugee rights and agreeing to a Palestinian Bantustan under permanent Israeli domination.
Currently Hamas is enjoying an upsurge of support after the breach of the Gaza-Egypt border, which news has got world attention regarding how, despite Condi Rice saying otherwise,
Israel has had under lock and key under cover of a thin fig leaf
of outside governance of the border crossings. The Gaza Ghetto revolted and the world has seen it. Not to worry, Israel and Egypt with support from the quisling regime in Ramallah, the EU and the US are trying to reimpose the blockade, squelch the uprising.
The Palestinians need their own M L King, Israel needs to face half a million Palestinians marching nonviolently toward Erez [crossing with Israel].
With its escalation in Gaza and refusal to accept a ceasefire, Israel may be trying to provoke more rocket attacks and force Hamas into abandoning its political strategy altogether to provide the needed pretext to "decapitate" the organization. Unfortunately, there are signs that Hamas is jumping into the trap.
It appears Israel is much more comfortable with rockets falling on Sderot, than it would be with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians marching on the checkpoints in Gaza or the West Bank.
In the end it takes nonviolent people power to expose racial injustice.
"Less so than Israel's right-wing agenda?"
Yes. Absolutely.
I reject the right-wing agenda. I reject the Hamas agenda.
Don't pander to them by the "enemy of my enemy is my friend".
You'll end in bed with fascists.
Zionists are committed to democracy, and will find a means to negotiate a genuine peace with those that are willing to accept its existence.
Terror on civilians is a different beast entirely. It is cruel beyond reference. It is not rationalizable.
The difference with Hamas and Gandhiian non-violence, is that Gandhi's commitment was permanent, not tactical.
Gandhi did not advocate the shelling of civilians, nor the blowing up of restaurants, or schoolbuses.
If you remember, when he became aware that those that pretended to follow his message undertook violence on Muslim civilians or British, he fasted unto death.
Do you Haniyeh doing that?
In the orginal posting, the author quotes from a transcript of Sen. Obama's remarks, in order to show that Obama really was evenhanded in assigning responsibility for pushing the Isareli-Palestinian peace process forward. (The Left's contention, however, is that the Zionists forced Obama to blame Hamas for the lack of progress.)
The remarks culled by the author conveniently omit enough as to confuse or slant the issue. This is nothing short of manipulation. It is reprehensible.
Here are the preceding remarks, from the transcript ( as reported, accurately, on http://www.cimep.org/?p=9 the site, in fact, referenced by the author) And the ***** indicates where the author chose to pick up the quote.
See if the complete quote doesn't change the context significantly.
Obama: "The biggest impediment that we’ve got right now is that in the Palestinian territories you have on the one hand some moderates like (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud) Abbas who would like to move forward on peace process but they don’t have the capacity. And Fatah, the organization he was a part of, was corrupt in a fundamental way. So it wasn’t even an ideological. The problem was that they couldn’t deliver basic services to the people. On the other hand you’ve got Hamas, which is a better organization – is better organized, and in some ways closer to the ground, but won’t acknowledge
Israel’s right to exist, won’t renounce violence and abide by previous agreements. So what you need is a partner on the Palestinian side that is willing to, both willing to enter into peace talks and is able to execute.Now, once we have that partner, *****Israel’s going to have, you know in my speech to AIPAC (foreign policy council in Chicago) last week, I said they’re going to have some stones to carry in the road to peace. In particular, they are going to have to look at some of the settlements in the
West Bank, which it’s going to be very painful for them politically to do. But they’re not going to take that extraordinarily difficult political step until they feel that they’ve got a partner on the other side.Now, in the interim, nobody’s suffering more than the Palestinian people from this whole process. And I would like to see – if we could get some movement from Palestinian leadership – what I’d like to see is a loosening up of some of the restrictions on providing aid directly to the Palestinian people."
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