Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in an interview with ABC Nightline with Cynthia McFadden, November 28, 2007:
“[I]naction is also not an option. Doing nothing is also not an option. If you do nothing to try to resolve this conflict, if the parties don’t try to resolve this conflict, you’re going to have years and years more of the deprivation, the humiliation of the occupation and of the terror associated with this for the Israelis. And that’s not an option, either.
And I will tell you I do — I am concerned that the next generation of young Palestinians will no longer believe in the two-state solution. The people with whom I talk about the two-state solution are too often my age, and so we have to make the two-state solution a reality for Israelis and for Palestinians. And so yes, there are always potential downsides to acting, but there are really potential downsides to not acting.”
