Donald Trump: I’d give Israeli-Palestinian peace deal ‘one hell of a shot’

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said he’d give brokering a peace accord between Israel and Palestine “one hell of a shot” as president but that he didn’t want to start pointing fingers at who’s to blame since it might hurt the efforts down the road.

“A lot of people say an agreement can’t be made, which is OK, sometimes agreements can’t be made, not good,” Mr. Trump said at a town-hall event that aired on MSNBC Wednesday evening. “But you have both sides really, but you have one side in particular, growing up and learning that these are the worst people, these people are the worst people, etcetera etcetera.”

“It is a very, very tough agreement to make. I was with a very prominent Israeli the other day, said it’s impossible because the other side has been trained from the time they’re children to hate Jewish people,” he said. “But I will give it one hell of a shot. That I can tell you. But of all agreements … if you can do that deal, you can do any deal. But that’s probably the toughest deal in the world right now to make and it’s possible it’s not makeable because, don’t forget, it has to last.”

Asked whose fault he thinks the conflict is, Mr. Trump said he didn’t want to get into it.

“If I do win, there has to be a certain amount of surprise, unpredictability — our country has no unpredictability,” he said. “If I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’m saying to you, and the other side now [says], ’We don’t want Trump involved, we don’t want’ — let me be sort of a neutral guy, let’s see what — I’m going to give it a shot. It would be so great.”

“I would be so proud if I could do that,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s doable. I have friends of mine that are tremendous business people that are really great negotiators. They say it’s not doable. You understand a lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don’t want to say whose fault is it. … I don’t think it helps.”