TEL AVIV – During her tenure as secretary of state, a Hillary Clinton confidante presented the politician with a scheme to secretly foment Israeli and Palestinian protests. The aim was to push the Israeli government into negotiations to create a Palestinian state.
The details were contained in the latest batch of emails released by the State Department.
Thomas Pickering, who was State’s lead Benghazi investigator, detailed the plot in an email forwarded to Clinton’s private server by aide Cheryl Mills on December 18, 2011. Clinton in turn forwarded the email to another aide, Monica Hanley, and asked that the text be printed on paper.
In the email, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Pickering wrote, “Our group concluded rightly that we need to see a game changer in the region to make any progress.”
“Our group” was likely a reference to the International Crisis Group, or ICG. Pickering serves on the ICG’s small board of trustees along with billionaire George Soros. The ICG bills itself as an “independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.”
Pickering also co-authored the State Department’s Benghazi Accountability Review Board, or ARB, investigating the September 11, 2012 attacks. The ARB was criticized by Republicans for allegedly being too soft on Clinton.
“Netanyahu is not going to move for anything that the Palestinians can offer him which they can deliver,” Pickering laments in the email.
“He cannot deliver anything the Palestinians can accept without our help. He is much more satisfied with the status quo than with the risks of change.”
Pickering failed to mention that Netanyahu took the nearly unprecedented measure of freezing settlement activity as a gesture to jumpstart talks with the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli Prime Minister would later also release Palestinian terrorists from prison as a U.S.-brokered gesture in a failed bid to bring the PA back to the negotiating table.
To re-start Israeli-Palestinian talks, Pickering recommended a “game changer” consisting of Israeli and Palestinian demonstrations, noting that in the past other so-called game changers “put us in a position to help both parties and gave them incentives.”
Continued Pickering:
“What will change the situation is a major effort to use non-violent protests and demonstrations to put peace back in the center of people’s aspirations as well as their thoughts, and use that to influence the political leadership. This is far from a sure thing, but far, in my humble view, from hopeless.”
For Pickering, Palestinian women “can and ought to be at the center of these demonstrations. Many men and others will denigrate the idea. I don’t and I don’t think that was your message.”
“The Palestinian women have to begin this. Some few already have. They should use peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins in their own territories calling for peace and seeking to get their own leadership — which is more than willing — also to support them if they look successful.”
Pickering’s chaos plan called for demonstrations at Israeli anti-terror roadblocks and checkpoints.
“Finally, the women must have a strategy. It must be long term and find a way to bring continuing pressure to change minds at the top. There should be no effort physically to cross dividing lines, but there might be peaceful demonstrations against all aspects of the occupation on the Palestinian sides — roadblocks, land confiscations, new settlement activity, around military government installations and perhaps in Area C which they do not control.
This ought to be done with care but it could help to create the kind of action which no army can easily use force to deal with. There would be a chance force would be misused against them. With all and only women demonstrating peacefully under the eyes of the world the chances are much less force will be used against them, since that action has its own consequences. But in truth, I cannot minimize the fact that the dangers are not small.”
Timed with Palestinian demonstrations, Pickering called for the U.S. to secretly work with leftist Israeli NGOs to stage protests in Tel Aviv.
“On the Israeli side, it must be public demonstrations and show growth as well. Outside the Prime Minister’s office and the major squares and parks in Jerusalem and elsewhere have been the traditional places for demonstrations like this for peace and change to begin and persevere. Rabin Square in Tell Aviv would be right. The Peace Now organization (Shalom Akshav), despite its decline, is one starting point.”
Pickering cautioned Clinton against the public divining any U.S. fingerprints on the staged demonstrations.
“Most of all the United States, in my view, cannot be seen to have stimulated, encouraged or be the power behind it for reasons you will understand better than anyone. I believe third parties and a number NGOs on both sides would help, particularly if there were an outline of a peace document with parameters which, like those at the end of the Clinton administration, promised a fair and lasting peace and which the women on both sides could agree to support.”
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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