Condoleezza Rice Quotes
Frankly, the Palestinian Authority, which is corrupt and cavorts with terror...is not the basis for a Palestinian state moving forward
Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor (Republican), Quoted in Mercury News, June 15, 2002
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In the complicated and arcane Middle East, substantial majorities of Israelis and Palestinians both favored a two state solution, thus creating a Palestinian State out of the West Bank and Gaza. However, the Hamas terrorist organization won the majority of seats in the Parliament and formed the “government” of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas opposed Israel’s right to exist at all, as that position as well as virulent Anti-Semitic threats to all Jews in the world. Many called for Hamas to change their charter and crease their opposition to the right of Israel to exist. The President of the Palestinian authority called for new elections but Hamas refused. Thus Blair and other diplomats the world over were in a very difficult situation.
“Oslo” was a peace conference where the Israelis agreed to give the Palestinians more control over West Bank land in exchange for Palestinian renouncing of terrorism and violence. The Palestinian government was either too weak to expel or arrest the terrorists or unwilling to do so. In either case, Israel had a much harder time coping with terrorism which took Israeli lives and sense of security. A similar thing happened when the Israelis withdrew from the West Bank. Many Israelis thereafter did not want to consider allowing the Palestinians to control any more land, making a two state solution virtually untenable.
Condoleezza "Condi" Rice is an American diplomat, political scientist, civil servant, and professor who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Rice served as the 66th United States Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009 and as the 20th United States National Security Advisor from 2001 to 2005. A member of the Republican Party, Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state and the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor. Until the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch (by virtue of the secretary of state standing fourth in the presidential line of succession).
