Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed regret over U.S. ex-president Bill Clinton's comments that Russian immigrants to Israel were an obstacle to the Middle East peace process, the Jerusalem Post said on Thursday.
"As an old friend of Israel, Clinton must know that immigrants from the former Soviet Union have made a huge contribution to the strengthening and development of Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)," the paper quoted Netanyahu as saying.
Clinton told a round table with reporters in New York on Monday that the children of Russian immigrants made up an increasing proportion of the IDF and so forcibly removing settlers from the West Bank as part of a peace deal may prove difficult.
"An increasing number of the young people in the IDF are the children of Russians and settlers, the hardest-core people against a division of the land. This presents a staggering problem," Clinton said.
The U.S. ex-president recalled a conversation he had with Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident turned Israeli parliamentarian, who was the only Israeli minister to reject the peace agreement Bill Clinton proposed at the Camp David Summit in 2000.
"I said, 'Natan, what is the deal [about not supporting the peace deal]. He said, 'I can't vote for this, I'm Russian... I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.'"
The July 2000 Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David involved Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. It was an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a "final status settlement" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
MOSCOW, September 23 (RIA Novosti)
