"If our long-term goal is to try to minimize the number of groups like Al Qaeda that want to conduct terrorism both within the Middle East or beyond, they wouldn't all go away if the Palestinians and the Israelis made a comprehensive agreement, but half of the energy behind this would collapse," Mr. Clinton said.
"I don't think there is anything that we can do today on the terror front in a preventive way that is more important. ... We'll never ever really turn the tide on terror until it's done."
If Israel and the Palestinian Arabs could ever come to such an agreement, Mr. Clinton said, America would have to "be prepared to give a security guarantee both to Israel and the new state of Palestine," though he warned of the danger members of the Palestinian Authority would face.
He said he was proud of his role in promoting negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. "I didn't consider it a failure," he said. "I thought we were closer to peace than ever before. At least everybody knows what a peace agreement will look like."
Mr. Clinton also spoke of the danger of Iran developing a nuclear weapon, saying he was more worried about a terrorist group obtaining an Iranian bomb than the Islamic Republic using it itself. "Maybe some Iranian leader would think, maybe I can nuke Israel ... but we can handle that with a phone call," he said. "If a nuclear bomb ever exploded in the Middle East, even if it wiped out Israel, the main victims eventually would be all the Muslims around it who would be killed in the nuclear fallout."
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