Hillary Clinton said she would forge ahead on trying to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian deal should she become president, in a major foreign policy address Sunday at the Brookings Institution.
John Kerry, Clinton’s predecessor as secretary of state, recently expressed disappointment that he wasn’t able to forge a peaceful solution over the summer to the conflict. Clinton said were she to win the 2016 election, she would keep working with Israeli and Palestinian leaders towards a deal.
“I would as president begin to move forward again,” Clinton said. “We don’t want the light to go out completely because bad things can happen in the dark.”
In her address, Clinton also urged close monitoring of Iran to make sure it follows the rules for nuclear containment laid out in the deal negotiated by the Obama administration, laid out her approach to fighting the Islamic State and stressed the importance of restricting the group’s online activities.
Clinton has backed the U.S. agreement with Iran laying out how the country should limit its nuclear activities. But she also says she fully expects Iran to test the boundaries of the arrangement and the U.S. should carefully monitor the country for any violations and be prepared to “snap back” sanctions into place.
“Is [the agreement] perfect?” she said. “No. No agreement like that ever is. But I believe if it’s aggressively implemented and enforced, this deal will help us prevent a nuclear armed Iran.”
“Make no mistake, Iran will test our resolve,” she added. “They’ve already started to do so … we need to respond with further sanction designations if necessary.”
In her 2016 campaign, Clinton has generally backed the administration’s major military and diplomatic initiatives while advocating for a more robust application of them than Obama might carry out.
As Obama’s secretary of state for four years, she has vastly more foreign policy experience than most of her Republican competitors, yet they’ve recently been targeting her on the issue by drawing attention to the increasing disruption in Libya and trying to call into question her leadership abilities.
In her address Sunday, Clinton gave a fuller picture of how she’d respond to the Islamic State’s aggression, continued altercations between Israelis and Palestinians and Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
She also urged citizens against grouping most Muslim-Americans in with the extremists who commit large scale attacks, like last week’s shooting in San Bernadino, Calif. Americans should be “supporting” Muslims instead of “scapegoating” them, she said.
“I think it’s important to remind ourselves that Islam itself is not our adversary,” Clinton said. “This is not — and we should not let it become — a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between hate and hope, and the vast majority of Muslims are on our side of the battle if we don’t drive them away.”
Clinton also staked a strong pro-Israel stance, speaking against the increasing anti-Semitism around the world and advocating for the U.S. to strengthen its relationship with the country in order to combat terror together.
“We can see how critical it is for the United States and Israel to stand together closer than ever,” Clinton said. “We know our governments have had their share of disagreements in recent years, but the relationship has always been stronger and deeper than the headlines might lead you to believe.”
