Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) had a lengthy exchange over their differing opinions on the U.S.-Israeli relationship at Thursday night's debate.
Sanders recently attacked Israel for engaging in what he called disproportionate attacks against the Palestinians during the Gaza War in 2014, originally erroneously telling the New York Daily News that 10,000 Palestinians were killed. Sanders asserted he was "100 percent pro-Israel" and said the Palestinians needed to be treated with respect and dignity.
"Right now, in Gaza, unemployment is somewhere around 40 percent," Sanders said. "It hasn't been rebuilt ... Houses decimated, health care decimated, schools decimated."
Sanders said such views did not make him anti-Israel, but instead they paved the way to a working approach in the Middle East. Sanders did not mention the terrorist group Hamas that runs Gaza in his remarks.
Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Clinton if she agreed with Sanders' assessment. She replied by touting her time spent negotiating a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in 2012, mentioning the disparate groups she worked with to make that happen.
"They do not seek this kind of attack," Clinton said. "They do not invite rockets raining down on their towns and villages. They do not believe that there should be a constant incitement by Hamas, aided and abetted by Iran, against Israel, so when it came time after they had taken incoming rockets, taken the assaults and ambushes on their soldiers, and they called and told me that they were getting ready to have to invade Gaza again, because they couldn't find anybody to talk to to tell them to stop it."
Clinton said she didn't know how one runs a country when it's under constant threat.
"You have a right to defend yourself," Clinton said. "That does not mean that you don't take appropriate precautions, and I understand that there's always second-guessing any time there is a war."
She also said the U.S. needed to continue fighting for a two-state solution, also claiming that the Palestinians could have had a state if Yasser Arafat had agreed to the offer by Ehud Barak in the late 1990s.
Sanders retorted that Clinton did not answer the question about whether the Israelis used too much force in response, but Clinton said she had, and she added that the tactics by Hamas, such as using human shields, were "terrible." Clinton also reminded people of a little history: Israel left Gaza in 2005.
"They turned the keys over to the Palestinian people, and what happened? Hamas took over Gaza," Clinton said. "So instead of having a thriving economy with the kind of opportunities that the children of the Palestinians deserve, we have a terrorist haven that is getting more and more rockets shipped in from Iran and elsewhere."
Sanders again repeated Israel had a right to defend itself, but he said peace would not come to the region unless the U.S. had an "even-handed" approach to the conflict.