While Hillary Clinton’s Iowa town hall was supposed to highlight her commitment to cracking down on the gun industry, the conversation soon turned to the former secretary of state’s plans for brokering peace in the Middle East.
“I know it’s a tough battle we face,” Clinton said on Tuesday afternoon during the two minutes she spoke on gun violence. “But it’s up to all of us to make up our minds that we are going to be determined. We are going to make this a voting issue, just like the other side does.”
Hours after her campaign released an ad promoting Clinton’s stance on gun control, she switched to foreign policy, reaching back to her husband Bill Clinton’s time in the White House.
“Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat a state and Yasser Arafat could not find it in himself to accept … there could have been a Palestinian state of 15 years already if the Barak proposal had ben accepted!” Clinton told a young former Bosnian refugee who said he would study at Tel Aviv University next year. “So when I became secretary of state we tried again, we had three face-to-face-talks and that’s the last time they ever met.”
Clinton said she knew the path to peace in the region was difficult and that many tell her to “walk away, forget about it” and “give up on the two-state solution,” but told the crowds she believes that would be “a terrible mistake.”
Clinton also spoke of the Syria refugee crisis, slamming Saudi Arabia for not doing enough to help even though “they certainly have the means to do more.” Clinton also defended the Iran nuclear deal while reiterating her commitement to keep Tehran from getting a bomb, saying the U.S. is in “a stronger position to form a coalition against their other bad behavior because we have put a lid on their nuclear coalitions program.”
