Chris Matthews Quotes

The US must be the honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians. America needs to be to both of them what neither could be to the other: a trusted brokering partner. It is in their interest and our interest for America to play that role.

The Israeli lobby has clout in the U.S., which means that re-arranging the region and controlling its resources one way or another, will serve Israel through its control over the American administration.

Everyone assumes America must play the leading role in crafting some settlement or compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But Jefferson, Madison, and Washington explicitly warned against involving ourselves in foreign conflicts.

I believe that the United States is not genuine regarding having a cessation of violence in Syria.

The Amman Agreement failed because there was American pressure, and Israeli pressure, on Jordan to deal alone.

No one wants to abandon the Israelis. But I think the perception is, and I think it's probably an accurate perception, that the tail is leading the dog - that we are giving the Israelis carte blanche ability to exercise whatever they want to do in their area.

Every administration has this idea to talk tough to Israel and make nice to the Arabs and the Palestinians, and that's the way to bring about peace. It's counter-productive - it's actually the opposite.

Israel can't make peace without the clear support of the United States.

If the United States has to accept the U.N. resolutions, we have to generalize it across the board. We can't just pick and choose where we impose and accept the U.N. resolution and don't accept them. U.N. Resolution 242 is very clear and states very clearly that Israel has to go back to the borders of the pre-war of 1967.

It is wrong to say the U.S. should 'not take sides' in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Only the change on the international scene, the crisis in the gulf, and the strong, firm position of the United States against aggression between two Arab countries created realities that led to the Madrid Peace Conference.

It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

We would like to have friendly regimes with enough broad participation of their populations to maintain long-term stability, so that we would have not only access to the region's wealth, but we would be able to ensure the security of our good friend Israel.

It's remarkable that the failures of the Obama, Clinton, Kerry foreign policy are not only uniting the Left and Right in Israel but might even be creating some common ground between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America's foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.

Clinton impressed Assad: a young man who appeared to want to be neutral in the Arab-Israeli dispute - an illusion of course, but that's what Assad thought.

The United States should encourage Israel to take further steps to improve the Palestinian economy.

The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.

The long-term strategic goals of Iran and the long-term strategic goals of Turkey are close to the long-term strategic goals of the United States.

It is time to change our policy of appeasement toward the Palestinians, to strengthen our ties with the nation of Israel.

You take away the money from Israel? No. That's something we can't do.

Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty.

There is nothing in common between the United States and Saudi Arabia except Israel.

Wars the United States starts do not necessarily end when and how it wants them to.

The first thing I’m going to do is go to Israel and court Premier Begin’s wife like she was an 18-year-old schoolgirl. Then I’ll go to Egypt and court Sadat’s wife the same way. One of those ladies is going to turn around in bed to her husband and say: ‘You know, that little Bobby Strauss is not such a bad guy. Why don’t you do something nice for him?’