Clinton admits he tried to help Peres win 1996 election against Netanyahu
Clinton says he wanted Peres to win 1996 vote because he saw him as more supportive of peace than Netanyahu
Former US President Bill Clinton acknowledged for the first time that he tried to intervene to help Shimon Peres win Israel’s 1996 general elections against Benjamin Netanyahu because he viewed Peres as the candidate who was more supportive of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Clinton, who served as president from 1993 to 2001, made the admission during an interview with Israel’s Channel 10, excerpts of which were broadcast on Tuesday.
Clinton, who has made no secret of his rocky relationship with Netanyahu, did not specify how he tried to intervene of Peres’ behalf in the portions of the interview aired on Tuesday. But ahead of the May 1996 vote, held six months after the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Clinton made a number of high-profile appearances alongside Peres.
In March 1996, Clinton hosted a so-called “summit of the peacemakers” in Cairo with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Hussein, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and Peres, who had taken over as Prime Minister after Rabin’s assassination a year earlier.
He then paid a visit to Israel, in the midst of a wave of suicide bomb attacks during the Second Intifada.
In April, he hosted Peres at the White House where the two signed a joint declaration on combating terrorism.
But despite being ahead of Netanyahu in opinion polls prior to the election, Peres narrowly lost the vote.
“I tried to do it in a way that didn’t overtly involve me,” Clinton said, calling it “fair to say” that he tried to help Shimon Peres to win the election.
“I did try to be helpful to him because I thought he was more supportive of the peace process. And I tried to do it in a way that was consistent with what I believed to be in Israel’s interest, without saying anything about the difference in domestic policies, without anything else,” Clinton explained.
Clinton said that he was not angered by Netanyahu’s win, but rather “bewildered” at his “brashness”.
“I realized that he was now the leader of the country and if I wanted to support the peace I had to find a way to work with him. I wasn’t so much angry as just bemused by the brashness with which he played his hand. But that’s who he is. He did a very good job of it,” Clinton said.
The former US president had helped usher in the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s, which resulted in the Nobel prize for Peres. After Peres' death in September 2016, Clinton eulogized the Israeli statesman as "a genius with a big heart" and said "the Middle East has lost a fervent advocate for peace and reconciliation".
Clinton’s admission is unprecedented, with Israel’s right-wing having long accused Democratic US administrations of attempting to intervene in its general elections on behalf of more peace-oriented candidates. Netanyahu has nonetheless held on to power since he was first elected in 1996.
Under the Republican administration of current US President Donald Trump, however, the US-Israel relationship has thrived at the expense of Washington’s ties with the Palestinians.
Channel 10’s full interview with Clinton is set to air next week.