Romney video: Palestinians not interested in peace

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney told donors in a newly released video clip that Pales­tini­ans “have no inter­est” in peace with Israel and sug­gested that efforts at Mideast peace under his admin­is­tra­tion would languish.

Rom­ney says that Pales­tini­ans are “com­mit­ted to the destruc­tion and elim­i­na­tion of Israel” and that the prospects for a two-state solu­tion to Mideast peace were dim.

“You hope for some degree of sta­bil­ity, but you rec­og­nize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem.and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ulti­mately, some­how, some­thing will hap­pen and resolve it,” Rom­ney said.

The remarks are con­tained in a clip posted Tues­day on the web­site of the mag­a­zine Mother Jones. The mag­a­zine said it had obtained the video of a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., on May 17.

In the lat­est clip, Rom­ney is asked about the “Pales­tin­ian prob­lem.” He gives a detailed, though some­what ram­bling response, and says, “the Pales­tini­ans have no inter­est what­so­ever in estab­lish­ing peace,” and “the path­way to peace is almost unthink­able to accomplish.”

The magazine’s web­site quotes Rom­ney as say­ing he was against apply­ing any pres­sure on Israel to give up dis­puted ter­ri­tory for a two-state solu­tion with the Palestinians.

“The idea of push­ing on the Israelis to give some­thing up to get the Pales­tini­ans to act is the worst idea in the world,” Rom­ney says, accord­ing to the mag­a­zine. Mother Jones did not pro­vide video of that com­ment, however.

The new video is from the same event as the clip released Mon­day, in which Rom­ney says almost half of Amer­i­cans “believe that they are vic­tims.” Late Mon­day, Rom­ney did not dis­pute the clip but said his remarks were “not ele­gantly stated.”

Rom­ney also blasted Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s for­eign pol­icy approach as “naive.”

“The president’s for­eign pol­icy, in my opin­ion, is formed in part by a per­cep­tion he has that his mag­net­ism, and his charm, and his per­sua­sive­ness is so com­pelling that he can sit down with peo­ple like (Vladimir) Putin and (Hugo) Chávez and (Mah­moud) Ahmadine­jad, and that they’ll find that we’re such won­der­ful peo­ple that they’ll go on with us, and they’ll stop doing bad things,” Rom­ney says. “And it’s an extra­or­di­nar­ily naive perception.”

The Rom­ney cam­paign has not dis­puted the authen­tic­ity of the video released Mon­day. In a brief news con­fer­ence late Mon­day, Rom­ney said his com­ments were not “ele­gantly stated” and were spo­ken “off the cuff.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.