Responding to an e-mail containing a quote in which Netanyahu tells the Jerusalem Post, “We have two main enemies…. the New York Times and Haaretz,” Clinton sarcastically replies, “Further Bibi lore.”
In an article published two months after the Obama administration brokers a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, Jay Solomon and Laura Meckler write for the Wall Street Journal that three years earlier “Hillary Clinton, in her last months as secretary of state, helped open the door to…an acceptance that Tehran would maintain at least some capacity to produce nuclear fuel.” In July 2012, according to the report, Hillary’s foreign policy aide Jake Sullivan “met in secret with Iranian diplomats in Oman, but made no progress in ending the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. In a string of high-level meetings here over the next six months, the secretary of state and White House concluded that they might have to let Iran continue to enrich uranium at small levels, if the diplomacy had any hope of succeeding.”
2011
In an e-mail dated Dec. 18, 2011, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering, an adviser to Clinton, suggests that the U.S. covertly generate Palestinian unrest in an effort to push the Israeli government to jump-start stalled peace talks. “What will change the situation is a major effort to use nonviolent protests and demonstrations to put peace back in the center of people’s aspirations as well as their thoughts, and use that to influence the political leadership,” Pickering writes, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “cannot deliver anything the Palestinians can accept without our help.” It is unclear how Clinton reacts to Pickering’s idea.
Clinton expresses concern about the state of Israeli democracy, describing reports of gender segregation on buses operating in Jerusalem as “reminiscent of Rosa Parks,” the black civil rights icon who in 1955 refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to white passengers.
2010
In March, Clinton devotes a 45-minute phone conversation with Netanyahu to rebuking the prime minister for Israel’s decision to move ahead with 1,600 new housing units in eastern Jerusalem.
2009
In May, Clinton tells Al Jazeera, “We want to see a stop to [Israeli] settlement construction, additions, natural growth – any kind of settlement activity. That is what the president has called for.” Later that month, at a press conference with Egypt’s foreign minister, Clinton says Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.”
Michael Oren writes in Ally that the 2009 demand by the Obama administration for a complete Israeli settlement freeze marked the “first time in the history of the U.S.-Israel alliance” that the White House “denied the validity of a previous presidential commitment.” Oren was referring to the George W. Bush administration’s reported commitment to Israel that the Jewish state could build inside the construction lines of established settlements. But according to an e-mail made public by the State Department, Clinton in July 2009 writes to two aides that Bush-era secretary of state Condoleezza Rice “called to tell me I was on strong ground, saying what I did about there being no agreement [on settlements] between the Bush admin[istration] and Israel.”
U.S. Senator and 2008 Presidential Candidate
2008
In an interview with the Jewish Exponent of Philadelphia, Clinton supports “limited talks” with the Hamas terrorist group if Israel deems such outreach to be in its best interests. She refuses to address the “hypothetical question” of what she would do if Iran gains nuclear capability.
In a statement, Clinton says, “I deplore and condemn the Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel…. Israel has the right to defend its citizens…. I call on Hamas to stop this irresponsible aggression immediately, which would enable Israeli and Palestinian civilians to return to normal life.” She adds that the Bush administration “should have been taking a much more active role in bringing international pressure on Hamas to stop its attacks.”