Ben Carson: Create Palestinian State in Egypt, Get Israel out of Hamas’s Rocket Fire Range

While taking a good deal of criticism for his seeming lack of knowledge on foreign policy this week, Republican Ben Carson told Bloomberg Politics that he is in process of taking in a great deal of information in that regard.

In a statement to Bloomberg Politics, Carson acknowledged that he was constantly boning up on foreign policy. “Although I have visited the Baltic Rim and over 57 other countries around the world,” he said, “I am still in the stage of rapidly learning about the political dynamics of global politics.” And in a short Friday interview, Carson said that he gets a weekly foreign policy briefing from “former military people, some people who worked in the State Department” and “a number of people” who send him advice on their own accord.

He also took the time to offer up something of a unique alternative to the one- or two-state solution when it comes to Palestine. What’s unclear is how realistic the proposal might be in the eyes of Palestinians, along with some governments content to use the issue as it stands against Israel. Some might argue that a solution that leaves Israel intact isn’t exactly what they are after.

“We need to look at fresh ideas,” said Carson. “I don’t have any problem with the Palestinians having a state, but does it need to be within the confines of Israeli territory? Is that necessary, or can you sort of slip that area down into Egypt? Right below Israel, they have some amount of territory, and it can be adjacent. They can benefit from the many agricultural advances that were made by Israel, because if you fly over that area, you can easily see the demarcation between Egypt and Israel, in terms of one being desert and one being verdant. Technology could transform that area. So why does it need to be in an area where there’s going to be temptation for Hamas to continue firing missiles at relatively close range to Israel?”