Up Front With Hillary

Clinton discusses Middle East,
Obama's pastor in interview.

Bryan Schwartzman

Jewish Exponent

Philadelphia/JTA

U S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-
N.Y., said that American
efforts to bring Israelis and
Palestinians to the negotiating table
have often resulted in a reduction
—
in violence, even if
a lasting pace has
proved elusive.
"I think what we
did in the '90s was
beneficial in a stra-
tegic way and led to
a period where, at
times, there were no
Sen. Clinton
attacks being made,
no suicide bombings and no deaths:'
said Clinton, a Democratic presiden-
tial contender, in a telephone inter-
view with the Jewish Exponent.
The former first lady was referring
to the diplomacy undertaken by her
husband, Bill Clinton, when he was in
office and specifically the late 1990s,
when terrorism declined following a
rash of attacks in 1995 and 1996.
Clinton added that while the late
PLO leader Yasser Arafat may have
rejected peace in 2000, she did not
regret the Oslo process.
"It was a mistake for the Bush
administration to take a hands-off
approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israel is more vulnerable today that
it was eight years ago:' said Clinton,
who further criticized the current
president's push for elections in the
West Bank and Gaza back in 2006
as well as the inclusion of Hamas in
those elections.
Clinton said the administration got
back on the right track with the pro-
cess begun late last year at Annapolis,
Md., although she is concerned that
the weakened political positions of
both Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert may complicate
the efforts.
Clinton described both Hamas and
Hezbollah as existential threats to
Israel, but said that if elected presi-
dent, she would consider entering into

limited talks with Hamas if Israel
deemed such outreach was in its best
interests.
Regarding Iran, Clinton reiterated
her refusal to address the "hypotheti-
cal question" of what she would do if
Tehran gained nuclear capability in
the next four years.
Instead she called for increased
sanctions and low-level talks with
Iran to head off that possibil-
ity. Clinton repeated her barb at her
Democratic presidential rival, U.S.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., for saying
in a debate last year that during his
first year in office he would be open to
meeting Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
"If we did ever have to take action
against Iran, we would have demon-
strated to the rest of the world that we
had exhausted other possibilities," she
declared.
Clinton is leading in statewide
polls, and is campaigning across
Pennsylvania in the hopes that a
victory in the state's April 22 pri-
mary would bolster her claim to the
nomination. A newly released Gallup
Poll had Clinton and Obama in a sta-
tistical tie for support among Jewish
Democrats, with Clinton garnering 48
percent and Obama 43 percent.

Obama Controversy
On March 24, Clinton delivered a
major policy speech on the economy
at the University of Pennsylvania, hop-
ing to shift some focus back to herself
after the reaction to Obama's March
18 speech about race dominated the
national news.
In past weeks, Clinton had not com-
mented on the controversy surround-
ing Obama and his former pastor,
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose
sermons have circulated widely on the
Internet, and have included tirades
against both the United States and
Israel.
But during the interview, Clinton
said that "given all we have heard, he
would not have been my pastor ... We
don't have a choice when it comes to
our relatives, but we do have a choice
when it comes to churches or syna-
gogues."

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April 3 2008

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