Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Bill Clinton: Israel’s Russian Immigrants Are Obstacle to Peace

Former United States president Bill Clinton on Tuesday told the media that the Russian immigrant population in Israel is an obstacle to peace with Palestinians, sparking a furious response from Israel’s main immigrant party, Yisrael Beiteinu.

“An increasing number of the young people in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] are the children of Russians and settlers, the hardest-core people against a division of the land. This presents a staggering problem,” Clinton told a roundtable with press in New York. “It’s a different Israel. Sixteen percent of Israelis speak Russian.”

Foreign Policy magazine quoting Clinton as saying that Russian immigrants are least interested in a peace deal with Palestinians among Israelis. “They’ve just got there, it’s their country, they’ve made a commitment to the future there,” Clinton said. “They can’t imagine any historical or other claims that would justify dividing it.”

Read more at haaretz.com

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.