Ben Carson: GOP Candidate Wannabe on Palestine

Carson also weighed in on the Israeli election and the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state. "We need to look at fresh ideas," he says, which is something that politicians who aren’t familiar with the details over a certain issue like to say. What sort of #innovative think-leadership would Carson bring to the Israel-Palestine conflict?
"We need to look at fresh ideas," said Carson. "I don’t have any problem with the Palestinians having a state, but does it need to be within the confines of Israeli territory? Is that necessary, or can you sort of slip that area down into Egypt? Right below Israel, they have some amount of territory, and it can be adjacent. They can benefit from the many agricultural advances that were made by Israel, because if you fly over that area, you can easily see the demarcation between Egypt and Israel, in terms of one being desert and one being verdant. Technology could transform that area. So why does it need to be in an area where there’s going to be temptation for Hamas to continue firing missiles at relatively close range to Israel?"
"Sort of slip that area down into Egypt" is a fairly cold way to describe a mass removal of a people from their homeland. But sure, it would indeed make this problem much easier for Israel if Palestinians completely abandoned their legitimate territorial claims. He should suggest this to the Palestinian leadership. They’ll be all, "Whoa hey, now there’s some thinkin’ — check out the noggin on this guy!"

Carson doesn’t need to worry all that much, though. Aside from nailing down a few key facts — what countries are in what alliances, which countries share borders, etc. — you don’t need all that much foreign policy knowledge to compete in a GOP presidential primary. You just need to know that aggressively pushing Russia into a corner is always a great idea that can only have positive consequences and never backfire, the proper Middle East policy is to kill everyone who gives America a nasty look, and same deal for all the other countries everywhere else. Leftism in South America must be dealt with — that too. Leftism in our hemisphere is bad. "Stand up to badness" is the general idea.

　

Source: Salon