Sanders NY Daily News Interview: Israeli-Palestinian conflict

[BainsBane]

Daily News: I was talking about something different, though. Expanding settlements is one thing; coming into office as a President who said as a baseline that you want Israel to pull back settlements, that changes the dynamic in the negotiations, and I'm wondering how far and what you want Israel to do in terms of pulling back.

Sanders: Well, again, you're asking me a very fair question, and if I had some paper in front of me, I would give you a better answer. But I think if the expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is appropriate.

Daily News: And who makes the call about illegality, in your mind?

Sanders: Well, I think that's based on previous treaties and ideas. I happen to think that those expansions were illegal.

Daily News: Okay, so if we were to find Israeli settlements, so-called settlements, in places that has been designated to be illegal, you would expect Israel to be pulling them back?

Sanders: Israel will make their own decisions. They are a government, an independent nation. But to the degree that they want us to have a positive relationship, I think they're going to have to improve their relationship with the Palestinians.

Daily News: Okay, but I'm just talking about, you’d be getting involved in the negotiations, and this would be setting a benchmark for the negotiations that you would enter the talks, if you do, having conveyed to both parties, including the Palestinians, that there's a condition here that you want Israel to remove what you described as "illegal settlements." That's going to be the baseline. Now, if you're really...

Sanders: Well, there’s going to be a lot of things on the baselines. There are going to be demands being made of the Palestinian folks as well. When you sit down and negotiate, obviously...

Daily News: And what are those demands?

Sanders: Well, for a start, the absolute condemnation of all terrorist attacks. The idea that in Gaza there were buildings being used to construct missiles and bombs and tunnels, that is not where foreign aid should go. Foreign aid should go to housing and schools, not the development of bombs and missiles.


Daily News: Okay. Now, you have obviously condemned Hamas for indiscriminate rocket attacks and the construction of the military tunnels. But you've also criticized Israel for what you described as a disproportionate response.

Sanders: Yep.

Daily News: And I'm going to look at 2014, which was the latest conflict. What should Israel have done instead?

Sanders: You're asking me now to make not only decisions for the Israeli government but for the Israeli military, and I don't quite think I'm qualified to make decisions. But I think it is fair to say that the level of attacks against civilian areas...and I do know that the Palestinians, some of them, were using civilian areas to launch missiles. Makes it very difficult. But I think most international observers would say that the attacks against Gaza were indiscriminate and that a lot of innocent people were killed who should not have been killed. Look, we are living, for better or worse, in a world of high technology, whether it's drones out there that could, you know, take your nose off, and Israel has that technology. And I think there is a general belief that, with that technology, they could have been more discriminate in terms of taking out weapons that were threatening them.

Daily News: Do you support the Palestinian leadership's attempt to use the International Criminal Court to litigate some of these issues to establish that, in their view, Israel had committed essentially war crimes?

Sanders: No.

Daily News: Why not?

Sanders: Why not?

Daily News: Why not, why it....

Sanders: Look, why don't I support a million things in the world? I'm just telling you that I happen to believe...anybody help me out here, because I don't remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/transcript-bernie-sanders-meets-news-editorial-board-article-1.2588306

[Lucinda]

1. Thank you for breaking these down into topics

Much appreciated!

[BainsBane]

2. You're welcome

It's a long interview. Will get to the rest later.

[Armstead]

3. And your point is?....He should do unlimited pandering to israel like Clinton

Or maybe we should just tell the Palestinians to "cut it out"

The settlements have been a sore point for years. Israeli responses to terrorists have often been disproportional, which doesn't he;p matters.

So what else is new?

[BainsBane]

5. My point is to present the interview

I presented it exactly as written. You seem to find his own words objectionable. You need to ask yourself why that is.

[Armstead]

6. I don't find them objectionable at all

Much less objectionable than Clinton's throwing Obama's handling of Israel under the bus the other week.

[DanTex]

8. Strange, right? Present the exact transcript, with full context, and the Bernie fans get angry.

[Jefferson23]

4. Hillary went to the right of Trump at the AIPAC meeting, thank goodness Bernie did not.

Declaring that being neutral to the world will not be part of her administration regarding
the I/P conflict was beyond pandering.

[jack_krass]

7. Thanks. Your article has made me change my mind about Bernie. Im changing my vote now to Clinton.

NOT!!!!!!!

[oberliner]

9. There is no source anywhere that says 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza in 2014

Even the highest estimates from the Palestinian side put the civilian death toll under 2,000.