Donald Trump came down foursquare in favor of new construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank on Monday, telling Dailymail.com that the controversial practice has to 'keep going' and 'keep moving forward.'
"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." Genesis 12:3 (KJV)
There are 'thousands of missiles being launched into Israel,' he said Monday. 'Who would put up with that? Who would stand for it?' Trump said last year he would like to initially remain 'neutral' in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as president, a position that he believes would allow him a better opportunity to be seen as a peace broker.
Meanwhile he has repeatedly expressed his love for Israel and increasingly his support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies, all while repeatedly trashing the Barack Obama-backed Iran nuclear deal.
Trump says Israel shouldn't 'pause' West Bank settlements
But in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Donald Trump came out for the continued construction of new settlements irrespective of Israeli government policy.
Asked whether there should be a pause in new construction – which the Obama administration has pressured Netanyahu's government to observe in order to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table – Trump responded: 'No, I don't think it is, because I think Israel should have – they really have to keep going. They have to keep moving forward.'
'No, I don't think there should be a pause,' Trump said. 'Look: Missiles were launched into Israel, and Israel, I think, never was properly treated by our country. I mean, do you know what that is, how devastating that is?'
Donald Trump AIPAC Policy Conference Speech:
Donald Trump spoke at AIPAC and received a rousing standing ovation when done. Click to see why....
'With all of that being said, I would love to see if peace could be negotiated. A lot of people say that's not a deal that's possible. But I mean lasting peace, not a peace that lasts for two weeks and they start launching missiles again. So we'll see what happens,' Trump added.
'I'd love to negotiate peace. I think that, to me, is the all-time negotiation,' Trump said, in reference to stalled peace talks – which Palestinian negotiators say won't occur without a halt in new construction.
The Obama administration demanded in 2009 that Netanyahu's administration freeze new settlement construction in an effort to get the two sides to the negotiating table
Clinton herself admitted the position may have backfired in her memoir, '
Hard Choices.' 'In retrospect, our early, hard line on settlements didn't work,' she wrote. Clinton told Al Jazeera in 2009: ‘We want to see a stop to [Israeli] settlement construction, additions, natural growth – any kind of settlement activity. That is what the president has called for.'
In 2013, after Netanyahu announced the construction of new settlements in East Jerusalem, Hillary Clinton called the move 'insulting.'
Hillary Clinton condemns Israeli settlements:
In 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Israel to reverse its plans to build new housing settlements in the West Bank. On Israel's settlement announcement, she said "these activities set back the cause of a negotiated peace."
'We have to make clear to our Israeli friends and partner that the two-state solution which we support, which the prime minister himself said he supports, requires confidence-building measures on both sides,' she said then.
Clinton is now the Democratic Party's presidential front-runner and Trump's likely head-to-head opponent in November.
Middle East expert Aaron David Miller, who has advised multiple U.S. presidents on Israeli-Palestinian issues, told Dailymail.com that Trump has created controversy with his prior comments about 'housing projects.'
Referring to his latest pronouncements, he said, 'He's green-lighted Israeli settlements. But I suspect in the unimaginable event he became president [that] would tighten up in a negotiation.'
Trump told the powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC earlier in the campaign: 'I love the people in this room, I love Israel, I love Israel.'
'I've been with Israel so long, in terms of – I've received some of my greatest honors from Israel, my father before me, incredible,' he continued. 'My daughter Ivanka is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby!'
Trump sat down with DailyMail.com for a wide-ranging interview in Indianapolis during his last day of campaigning for Tuesday's Indiana Republican primary election. Asked about his relationship with Netanyahu, Trump called him 'a very good guy' for whom he had made a campaign ad in 2013.
'I don't know him that well, but I think I'd have a very good relationship with him,' Trump said. 'I think that President Obama has been extremely bad to Israel.' 'And I don't even understand where – I have Jewish friends that support Obama. I tell them all the time, I say, "What are you doing? The Iran deal is a disaster for Israel".'
Trump announced in December that he had planned a trip to Israel, but quickly scuttled it after Netanyahu criticized him for proposing a temporary ban on non-citizen Muslims entering the United States.
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