Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Saturday defended his statement that the Palestinians are an “invented” people, brushing aside criticism that he had unnecessarily made the Mideast peace process more difficult.
“Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes,” Gingrich said during a candidate debate in which he drew applause for asserting that it was time someone spoke the truth about the nature of Israel’s struggle with the Palestinians.
“Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists,” he said. “It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, ‘Enough lying about the Middle East.’”
Gingrich’s earlier remarks to a cable channel struck at the heart of Palestinian sensitivities about the righteousness of their struggle for an independent state. Applying the label “invented” to Palestinians suggests that their quest for independence is not legitimate, though Gingrich later said he indeed supports the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a settlement with Israel.
"Gingrich defends calling Palestinians ‘invented’ people, supports peace agreement with Israel"
ReplyDeleteby Associated Press
On its face, however, the statement put Gingrich at odds not only with the international community but with all but an extremist fringe in Israel. Mainstream Israelis, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, support the idea of an independent Palestine alongside Israel as part of a final peace agreement.
ReplyDeleteGingrich rejected criticism from chief rival Mitt Romney that he had spoken for Israel when he shouldn’t have.
“That was a mistake, on the speaker’s part,” Romney said during the evening debate. “The United States should not jump ahead of Bibi Netanyahu and say something that makes it more difficult for him to do his job.”
At a veterans forum earlier in the day, Gingrich said the burden to show a willingness to reach a peace accord with the Israelis lies squarely with the Palestinians.
“When the president keeps talking about a peace process while Hamas keeps firing missiles into Israel, if we had a country next to us firing missiles, how eager would we be to sit down and negotiate?” he said.
Palestinian officials reacted furiously on Saturday to Gingrich’s assertion, accusing the Republican presidential hopeful of incitement and staging a “cheap stunt” to court the Jewish vote.
As Gingrich has risen to lead in national and early-voting-state polls, he has come under criticism from his party rivals for making inflammatory statements. The Palestinian comments intensified that scrutiny with less than four weeks until Iowa’s precinct caucuses kick off the nominating contests on Jan. 3.
In footage released Friday, the former House speaker told the Jewish Channel, a U.S. cable TV network, that the Palestinians were an “invented people.”
“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state — (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places,” Gingrich said according to a video excerpt posted online.