Barack Obama delivered a complex analysis of the conflict between Israel and Gaza, telling thousands of former aid workers that they were all “involved to some degree” in the current bloodshed.
“When I look at this, I think back: ‘What could I have done during my presidency to move this forward, as hard as I tried?'” he said in an interview conducted by his former aides for their podcast Pod Save America had led. “But part of me still wonders, ‘Is there anything else I could have done?'”
Mr. Obama entered the White House convinced that he could be the president who would resolve the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. He left office after years of tension and mistrust with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was frustrated with the president’s plans for the Iran nuclear deal and his demands that Israel suspend new settlements.
In his comments on Friday, delivered at a meeting of his former aides in Chicago, Mr. Obama acknowledged the strong emotions the war had stirred, saying, “These are centuries-old things that are coming to the fore.” He blamed the social media to deepen divisions and reduce a sensitive international dispute to what he saw as slogans.
Still, he urged his former aides to “grasp the whole truth” and seemingly try to find a balance between the killings on both sides.
“What Hamas did was terrible and there is no justification for it,” Obama said. “And it is also true that the occupation and what is happening to the Palestinians is unbearable.”
He continued: “And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that can be dismissed unless your grandparents or great-grandparents, your uncle or your aunt tell you stories about the madness of anti-Semitism. “And what is true is that there are people dying right now who had nothing to do with what Hamas did.”
Still, Mr. Obama appeared to acknowledge the limits of his thinking about bridging divides and managing complexity.
“Even what I just said, which sounds very convincing, still doesn’t answer the fact, how can we prevent children from being killed today?” he said. “But the problem is that when you get into it, the other side remembers the videos that Hamas made or what they did on the 7th, and they are interested in it too, which means we “Don’t do it.” Stop these children from dying.”