(ABC News) Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday: "There was a ceasefire on Oct. 6 that Hamas broke by their barbaric assault on peaceful civilians and their kidnapping, their killing, their beheading, their terrible inhumane savagery. There was a ceasefire. It did not hold because Hamas chose to break it." "Hamas is a terrorist organization. It has made very clear it is committed to the elimination of the State of Israel and it has consistently broken ceasefires over a number of years. Israel has a right to defend itself as any country would....A ceasefire done prematurely benefits those who do not abide by any laws, by any rules." "My husband (President Bill Clinton), with the Israeli government at the time, in 2000, offered a Palestinian state to the Palestinians, at that time run by Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).... Arafat turned that down. There would have been a Palestinian state now for 23 years if he had not walked away from it. There was another attempt when I was Secretary of State to try to bring the Palestinians and the Israelis together. That didn't work out. Israel left Gaza in 2005 and forcibly ejected thousands of Israelis who were living in Gaza." "I believe it is imperative, since we have had numerous ceasefires with Hamas, all of which they have violated, to try finally to dislodge Hamas and allow the Palestinians to have other leadership that will actually work for a two-state solution....You have to remove from the scene terrorists like Hamas who don't believe in peace. They don't believe in it for their own people. They're using their own people as shields."
2023-11-09 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive