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The Gaza war in 8 minutes (Hillary Clinton)
2023-11-09 (098)
All you need to know about the Gaza war in 8 minutes (Hillary Clinton)
Video Transcription:
But remember, there was a ceasefire on October
6 that Hamas broke by their barbaric assault
on peaceful civilians and their kidnapping.
They're killing, they're beheading,
their terrible, inhumane savagery.
There was a ceasefire.
It did not hold because Hamas chose to break it.
So you have to keep several things
in your head at the same time.
And that is, number one.
Hamas is a terrorist organization.
It has made very clear it is committed to
the elimination of the State of Israel, and it
has consistently broken ceasefires over a number of years.
Israel has a right to defend
itself, as any country would.
Ukraine has a right to defend itself against
an invasion, an unlawful, inhumane invasion by Russia.
And Israel should conduct itself by the
laws of war and do everything it
can to prevent and limit civilian casualties.
Those three things are all true themselves.
And so when I said a couple of weeks ago
that it wasn't time for a ceasefire because it would
enable Hamas to rearm and reposition, because I've been to
Gaza, and Gaza is a highly populated urban environment, and
what has been going on now for a number of
years under Hamas rule, is the building of over 200
miles of tunnels under Gaza, the storing of munitions, all
kinds of explosives under hospitals, under refugee camps, under civilian
targets, the use of civilians as really just tools of
war by Hamas.
That has all been going on.
And so when I said you could not
have a ceased fire, people didn't understand that
Hamas would use it for their own purposes.
I think we're now moving toward a position
where the idea of these humanitarian pauses that
the Biden administration has been promoting are now,
I think, on the table and should be.
And what would that mean?
Well, first of all, let's remember over 240 innocent
people, not just Israelis, people from other countries.
The second biggest number of people taken by Hamas
are workers from Thailand who were working in agriculture.
So this is a multinational hostage situation.
A humanitarian pause would enable two things to happen if
Hamas would agree, and that is let the hostages go.
These are innocent civilian people.
They should not be held as captives to Hamas
and let in more humanitarian aid that actually gets
where it's intended, not into the hands of Hamas.
So if we work on all of that, I think
it's possible, given where the current situation is, because the
Israelis are now in Gaza with ground troops, they have
cut off the north from the south.
They have surrounded Gaza City, which is the
central command structure of the Hamas militants.
So I think now would be a
good time to consider doing that.
But a ceasefire done prematurely benefits those who do
not abide by any laws, by any rules, by
any human character value, about the value of life.
So it was much too premature.
Now, I think the pauses should be considered. Right.
Well, let me ask you this, because the
ceasefire option, or at least the humanitarian pauses,
is a very popular concept, not only in
this country but around the world, because we're
seeing the death of at least 10,000 innocent
Palestinian civilians and half of those are children.
Yeah.
So former President Obama said, quote, and collective
punishment is against international human rights law.
So former President Obama said, quote, if you want to solve
the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth
and you then have to admit nobody's hands are clean here,
that all of us are complicit to some degree.
Is that, in your view, a wake up call for Democrats?
A lot of the international community agrees with him.
Do you agree that the Israeli government as well as
the US are part of the problem as well?
Well, I think that the problem predates October 7.
And I think that's what
President Obama was talking about.
Because let's remember, this is a
very long and complicated history.
My husband, with the Israeli government at the time,
in 2000, offered a Palestinian state to the Palestinians
at that time run by Arafat, Yuser Arafat and
the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which, by the
way, took out of its charter violence against Israel.
So you've got to separate the Palestinians who believe
that there is some future of peace with Hamas,
which believes it has to destroy Israel.
Those are two different organizations and they
have to be viewed in that way.
Arafat turned that down.
There would have been a Palestinian state now for 23
years if he had not walked away from it.
There was another attempt when I was
secretary of state to try to bring
the Palestinians and the Israelis together.
That didn't work out.
Israel left Gaza in 2005 just and forcibly
ejected 50,000 Israelis who were living in Gaza.
They left all of their infrastructure.
They had a big infrastructure of greenhouses where
they were supplying fruits, vegetables, flowers, et cetera.
And the Palestinians deserved to have
a productive, successful economy in Gaza.
Hamas came in and basically destroyed all of
that and killed a lot of other Palestinians.
So I think when President Obama says that, it requires us
to look at the history, and of course, history holds all
of us accountable, and that is a fair statement.
But today we have to look at where we are.
And I believe it's imperative, since we have had numerous
ceasefires with Hamas, all of which they have violated, to
try, finally to dislodge Hamas and allow the Palestinians to
have other leadership that will actually once again work for
a two state solution, which should be the outcome that
we all hope and pray.
You know, it's what's funny.
The biggest deal when I think about all
of this, know, I think about Anwasadat.
For me, he was a beacon.
If you don't know who he was, look him up.
He was somebody who felt that there was a
better way for everybody to exist in Israel.
Wolfie, can I say something?
Because that's a really important point.
Israel and Egypt fought wars.
That's part of this complex history that
people need to educate ourselves about.
And after fighting wars, Sadat went to
Israel and made peace with the then
current Israeli government, and that ended.
That's why you see the current Egyptian government
working to try to get supplies into Gaza,
to try to get civilians and foreign nationals
and wounded people out of Gaza.
So there's a working relationship
now between Egypt and Israel.
Jordan and Israel made a peace agreement.
I was there to see that happen.
So people should not get hopeless.
There is hope, but you have to remove from the
scene terrorists like Hamas who don't believe in peace.
They don't believe in it for their own people.
They are using their own people as shields, and they
don't believe that it's possible to do with Israel.
Let's try to have people who can lead us to peace.
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