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Palestinians Have 'No Interest ... In Establishing Peace,' Romney Says

The liberal news outlet Mother Jones has followed Monday's leaked video of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney saying that 47 percent of Americans will vote for President Obama because they are "dependent upon government" and "believe that they are victims," with another clip in which he says Palestinians have "no interest whatsoever in establishing peace."

He goes on to say Israel, Palestine and the whole Mideast peace process "is going to remain an unsolved problem" and concludes that "there's just no way" the so-called two-state solution will work.

The series of clips, Mother Jones says, come from a May 17 private fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla. Last night, as It's All Politics reported, Romney stood by his comments about Obama's supporters — but said they were "not elegantly stated."

During his May 17 remarks about the Middle East, Romney said that:

"Some might say, well, let's let the Palestinians have the West Bank, and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians. And then come a couple of thorny questions. ...

"The other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian state would either be Syria at one point, or Jordan. And of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon, what they did near Gaza. Which is that the Iranians would want to bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel. So Israel of course would have to say, 'That can't happen.' ... Well, that means that-- who? The Israelis are going to patrol the border between Jordan, Syria, and this new Palestinian nation? Well, the Palestinians would say, 'Uh, no way!' ...

"And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, 'There's just no way.' "

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.