“I don’t have it in my number… but I think it’s over 10,000”.
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Declining to address in person the annual meeting of an organization intensely interested in American policy toward Israel, Bernie Sanders last month said he felt pressed to instead remain on the campaign trail in Utah.
In what may emerge as the biggest gaffe of the 2016 presidential campaign, and which has already cast a shadow over Bernie Sanders’ victory in the Wisconsin Democratic primary on Tuesday, the Vermont Senator gave a grossly exaggerated figure of “over 10,000 innocent” Palestinians killed in the 2014 fighting, and blamed Israel for “indiscriminate” attacks. “I think that is the path toward peace”.
On Monday 4 April, seven homes were destroyed over a 24 hour period, three of them belonging to the families of three Palestinian men who were gunned down after they killed an Israeli soldier near Damascus gate in February.
In an interview with The Times of Israel on Wednesday, the head of the Democratic Party’s Israel branch suggested Sanders may have been referring to those wounded, rather than killed in Gaza.
Nevertheless, Sanders did try to save face, stating “I lived in Israel”.
To name one, Israel needs a negotiating partner that can reliably guarantee security, halt terror attacks and recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
“I think most worldwide observers would say that the attacks against Gaza were indiscriminate and that a lot of innocent people were killed who should not have been killed”.
Since September previous year, 57 houses belonging to Palestinians have been levelled, according to the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Negotiations Affairs Department.
Sanders told the Daily News that U.S.-Israel relations under his leadership would hinge on Israel improving its relations with the Palestinian Authority. Makes it very hard.
“I think if the expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is appropriate”, Sanders said, although he could not specify where such withdrawals should take place, . Israel has claimed, with good reason, that at least half of those claimed as civilian deaths were, in fact, Hamas personnel.
But Baz denied any offence, saying the imports were in line with a UN-brokered Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, aimed at allowing for reconstruction following a devastating 2014 war with Israel.
In his most recent comments, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asserted that work is being done to root out knife violence, while stressing, however, that talks on a two-state solution must be held in order for them to produce a meaningful impact.
Sanders had criticism for the Palestinian side as well.
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A Daily News editor later said that “about 2,300” Palestinians were killed during the conflict.
