Palestinians: Violence and Terrorism in Region Caused by… Newt Gingrich? UPDATE: Gingrich Reaffirms Support for Palestinian Statehood

Call us crazy, but maybe–just maybe–at some point you’re only looking for an excuse.

From Reuters:

Palestinian leaders said on Saturday U.S. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had invited more conflict in the Middle East by calling the Palestinians an “invented” people who want to destroy Israel.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, described his comments in an interview as “despicable.” Hanan Ashrawi, another top official, said Gingrich’s “very racist comments” showed he was “incapable of holding public office.”

“This is the lowest point of thinking anyone can reach,” Erekat, a close advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters. Such comments served only to “increase the cycle of violence,” he added.

“What is the cause of violence, war in this region? Denial, denying people their religion, their existence, and now he is denying our existence,” said Erekat, for years a leading figure in peace talks aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

In an interview on Friday with the Jewish Channel, Gingrich predictably sided with Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, who are seeking a state of their own on land occupied by Israel in a 1967 war.

But the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives departed from official U.S. policy that respects the Palestinians as a people deserving of their own state based on negotiations with Israel.

“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire” until the early 20th century, said Gingrich, who has risen to the top of Republican polls with voting to start early next year to pick a nominee to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.

Read the rest of the story here.

UPDATE:

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is reaffirming his support for a Palestinian state as part of negotiated peace agreement with Israel, a day after he was criticized for calling the Palestinians an “invented” people in a television interview.

Gingrich has said in the past he is open to supporting Palestinian statehood, as have U.S. presidents from different political parties.

Hours before the first debate in Iowa since surging to the front of the Republican field, Gingrich released a statement saying he supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, including a Palestinian state.

But in the statement Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said that “to understand what is being proposed and negotiated you have to understand decades of complex history – which is exactly what Gingrich was referencing.”