Saturday, November 14, 2009

Former US President Bill Clinton: Israel, PA can't 'Divorce'

Former US President Bill Clinton, whose energetic efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal collapsed, urged both sides Saturday to end their decades-old conflict, saying they cannot escape their common future.

"In the last 14 years, not a single week has gone by that I did not think of [former prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin and miss him terribly," Clinton said. "Nor has a single week gone by in which I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East."

Clinton spoke Saturday to a VIP gathering at the Yitzhak Rabin Center, a memorial to the former premier who was gunned down in November 1995 by Yigal Amir.

"We are either going to hurt each other or we are going to help each other," he said of Israel and the Palestinians. "Divorce is not an option."

Via IMRA:
Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: If prime minister Yitzhak Rabin hadn't been assassinated and the trend in polls before prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated continued to the elections then Netanyahu would have defeated him at the polls. Netanyahu did not rise to power because of the assassination despite it.