Bill Clinton: “Palestinians Were The Least Radical of All People In The Middle East”

by Lisandra Gomez-Tate in Daily Edition | October 14, 2023

Bill Clinton, photo: Hayden Schiff from Cincinnati, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Former President Bill Clinton gave a short history lesson about Gaza and the Palestinians now ruled by Hamas there. Listening to Clinton describe the events leading to the Hamas takeover of Gaza, it’s striking to hear the former President — knowledgeable on foreign policy, whatever his personal foibles — say in 2009 that when Hamas took over “the Palestinians were the least radical of all the people in the Middle East.”

Clinton says plainly: “The Bush administration thought there ought to be elections among the Palestinians. And that’s how Hamas got Gaza.” Clinton says Hamas slid into a vacuum left by Fatah, which long had been the ruling party and had “gotten a little long in the tooth.”

[Citing a situation closer to home, Clinton draws a stark historical parallel between the complacency of Fatah before the Hamas takeover and the Democratic Party’s complacency and schism in the deep South before Republicans made political inroads there.]

“People were going to vote for Hamas not because they wanted terrorist tactics — the Palestinians were the least radical of all the people in the Middle East — but because they thought they might [be] better service, better government,” Clinton says, echoing the famous idea that Mussolini would make the trains run on time.

Because Fatah was essentially split into two factions, Hamas was able to win Gaza with 41 percent of the vote. “A lot of people have forgotten that,” Clinton says.

America under the Bush administration wanted to “empower the Fatah government,” Clinton says, and “especially the moderates.” But while an election was a good idea, important details were overlooked, Clinton says, leaving a vulnerability that Hamas violently filled.