Former United States President Bill Clinton admitted on Tuesday that he intervened in Israel’s 1996 elections to help then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres (Labor) defeat Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud).
“It would be fair to say that I tried to help Peres win the elections and I tried to help him in such a way that I would not be openly involved,” Clinton said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 News.
Clinton’s efforts to help Peres failed as the flaws in the American-backed Oslo Accords becoming more obvious led Israelis to elect Netanyahu for his first term as prime minister.
Clinton described his first meeting with Netanyahu in the White House following the 1996 election.
“He wanted me to know that he knew that I did not support him, and that he defeated us anyway. He behaved in a manner that is very typical of Bibi but I understood that he was the leader of the state now and if I wanted to try to support peace I had to find a way to work with him. I was just embarrassed by the audacity with which he conducted himself, but that’s who he is.”
Clinton blamed the current Netanyahu government for the failure to advance a two-state solution, despite his own failure in the summer of 2000 to broker an agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (Labor) and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to partition the country into two states.
Clinton had also been instrumental in helping Barak defeat Netanyahu in Israel’s 1999 elections, having even sent a team led by American political strategist James Carville to run Barak’s campaign.
The United States has a long history of meddling in foreign elections, especially in Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, often for the purpose of advancing a “two-state solution.”
