Andrea Mitchell Grills Netanyahu: Did Israel 'Poison' Peace Process?

In a contentious interview with Benjamin Netanyahu aired on her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Thursday, host Andrea Mitchell badgered the Israeli Prime Minister by repeatedly parroting a nasty attack line from the Obama administration: "...the White House and the State Department say that the new settlements in Arab East Jerusalem undercut your commitment to peace. That it could poison the atmosphere, it could turn the world against you. What is your response to that, when the President says that to you?" [Listen to the audio [1]]

After Netanyahu explained that the supposed "new settlements" were already existing Jerusalem neighborhoods, Mitchell repeated the White House talking points: "But what do you say when the President says that this undercuts your commitment to peace and is poisonous to an agreement with the Palestinians?"

Netanyahu pushed back:

Well, I find that curious because the criticism was leveled, one, at a new neighborhood that was mixed. It had a substantial part of the apartments that apportioned, parceled out to Arabs, to Palestinians, alongside Jews. So why not have them live together? The second part of the criticism was actually baffling to me. Because it criticized individual Jews who bought apartments in an Arab neighborhood. Now, Jews buy apartments, private property, in Arab neighborhoods. Arabs buy apartments in Jewish neighborhoods. And I find – that's the right thing to do.

Mitchell argued: "It's contested territory. It's territory that is supposed to be negotiated." Netanyahu pointed out: "Well, even if it is, it doesn't mean that you prevent an Arab from selling property to a Jew. If I said to you in any part of the United States or the world, 'Jews cannot buy apartments here'?"

For a third time Mitchell touted the Obama administration's harsh language against Israel: "But when you walk out of the White House and two hours later the White House press secretary and the State Department spokeswoman both slam Israel, talk about poison, how does that make you feel?" Netanyahu confessed: "Well, it doesn't make me feel good."

Here are excerpts from the exchange aired on the October 2 Andrea Mitchell Reports:

12:20 PM ET

ANDREA MITCHELL: Oval Office meetings between President Obama and Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu are never easy. And their 12th such meeting, the White House meeting yesterday, was no exception. It didn't help that Israel had just announced more Jewish settlements in Palestinian neighborhoods. Decisions the administration says have sabotaged John Kerry's peace initiative. I sat down with Netanyahu last night for his reactions.

MITCHELL [TO NETANYAHU]: You had a meeting with President Obama and the White House and the State Department say that the new settlements in Arab East Jerusalem undercut your commitment to peace. That it could poison the atmosphere, it could turn the world against you. What is your response to that, when the President says that to you?

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Well, I think they should be acquainted with the facts first. First of all, these are not settlements, these are neighborhoods of Jerusalem. We have Arab neighborhoods and we have Jewish neighborhoods.

MITCHELL: Well, they redefined territory that is very much in play in a final peace arrangement.

NETANYAHU: Well, I think that in any question, any proposal for peace that I have seen, including in those that have come from Palestinians, the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, which is what we're talking about, are going to stay with Israel because nobody's going to move nearly half of Jerusalem's population that lives beyond the former 67' lines.

MITCHELL: But what do you say when the President says that this undercuts your commitment to peace and is poisonous to an agreement with the Palestinians?

NETANYAHU: Well, I find that curious because the criticism was leveled, one, at a new neighborhood that was mixed. It had a substantial part of the apartments that apportioned, parceled out to Arabs, to Palestinians, alongside Jews. So why not have them live together? The second part of the criticism was actually baffling to me. Because it criticized individual Jews who bought apartments in an Arab neighborhood. Now, Jews buy apartments, private property, in Arab neighborhoods. Arabs buy apartments in Jewish neighborhoods. And I find – that's the right thing to do. I mean, if I had to-

MITCHELL: It's contested territory. It's territory that is supposed to be negotiated.

NETANYAHU: Well, even if it is, it doesn't mean that you prevent an Arab from selling property to a Jew. If I said to you in any part of the United States or the world, "Jews cannot buy apartments here"?

MITCHELL: Is that what you said to the President?

NETANYAHU: We didn't actually get into this discussion. We discussed, in a very good and deep discussion, the big issues of the day. We discussed certainly the Arab-Israeli or the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

MITCHELL: But when you walk out of the White House and two hours later the White House press secretary and the State Department spokeswoman both slam Israel, talk about poison, how does that make you feel?

NETANYAHU: Well, it doesn't make me feel good. But I think the important thing is to – is to get the facts right. I mean, start with the facts. The facts are as I described.

MITCHELL: And you think that President Obama has the facts wrong?

NETANYAHU: We didn't discuss it, I have to tell you. There was a generic statement, but not –  we didn't get into these specific instances.

MITCHELL: But let's talk about it as a practical point, you say that Hamas is evil and America has called it a terror group. Wouldn't you want to strengthen the more moderate Palestinians in the West Bank? What this does is undermine them politically and makes it even more difficult to get a deal.

NETANYAHU: I actually don't think so. I think that the idea that the West Bank will be Jew-free and in Jerusalem you can't buy apartments there, I think this is a notion that should be contested.

MITCHELL: And you don't think it undercuts your commitment to a two-state solution?

NETANYAHU: No, on the contrary. I said we need to have a vision of peace of two nation states that recognize one another.

(...)

12:37 PM ET

MITCHELL: What was your reaction when you heard, overheard – we all overheard John Kerry this summer at the high point of the bombings in Gaza and a school, a shelter was taken out and he was overheard saying, "That's a hell of a pinpoint operation," sarcastically. There's a lot of anger in the administration against the civilian – against Israel because of the civilian casualties.

NETANYAHU: Well, I think the United States gave very strong support in our right to defend ourselves and our right to act against terrorists who use civilians as a human shields. That's what Hamas was doing, was sending thousands of rockets into our cities. Now you try to minimize, as we did, any civilian casualties, but you don't want to give terrorists impunity.

MITCHELL: But your response to the U.N. officials who said that there were 33 warnings in that shelter and the shelter was leveled and all those kids died.

NETANYAHU: Not one of them was something that we intended to do. You always have the accidental and unintended casualties, civilian casualties in any war. What you have with the Palestinians is that – with the Hamas rather, is that they weren't accidentally targeting civilians, they were deliberately targeting them and deliberately using their own children as human shields.

You didn't see these – this implementation of rockets in schools and homes and so on because Hamas just threatened people. They executed their own people in they dare to protest. What they were doing – here's a photograph. This is of an impending execution during the recent operation. This isn't ISIS, this is Hamas. And this is what they did, they executed dozens of Palestinians in Gaza to imposed their reign of fear on the people. Now it's true they don't behead people, they put a bullet in people's heads. But to the victims and to their families, the horror is just the same.

MITCHELL: And you think President Obama understands that?

NETANYAHU: Yes, I do. Absolutely.