Former US President Bill Clinton on Wednesday at the 2024 New York Times DealBook Summit recalled his failed attempt to achieve a peace deal between Israel and Palestinian Arabs, noting that young Americans sympathetic to the “Palestinian cause” “can’t even imagine” the peace deal that former PLO leader Yasser Arafat “walked away from.”

“When I tell young people in America who say they are super sympathetic with the Palestinians – a lot of those Palestinians have been killed and all [these young Americans] know is there are a lot more Palestinians who have been killed than Israelis,” Clinton said. “And I tell them what Arafat walked away from, and they can’t believe it.”

“I said, ‘Oh yeah, he walked away from a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, 96% of the West Bank, 4% of Israel to make up for the 4% that the settlers occupy that were beyond the borders in the 1967 war.’ I go through all the stuff that was in the deal, and – it’s not on their radar screen. They can’t even imagine that happened.”