Bush: ‘One side is guilty, and it’s not Israel’

Former President George W. Bush warned against equivocation amid the Israel-Gaza war while declaring that “negotiating with killers is not an option.”

“My view is: One side is guilty, and it’s not Israel,” Bush said at an event in California this week in video obtained by Axios and published Friday.

“You’re dealing with cold-blooded killers,” Bush said of Hamas in his first public remarks about the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group. “You can make all kinds of excuses why they are, but they are.”

Bush, who oversaw the invasion of Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks and then the invasion of Iraq in 2003, said “going into the neighborhoods of Gaza is going to be tough” and said expected military action in the area will be “ugly for a while.”

The former president said he expects that “it’s not going to take long” before people start saying, “It’s gone on too long. Surely, there’s a way to settle this through negotiations. Both sides are guilty.”

“Negotiating with killers is not an option,” Bush stated, saying Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s job is to “protect his country.”

More than 1,300 people were killed in Israel after Hamas launched an attack last Saturday, with the group also taking up to 150 people hostage, including some U.S. citizens.

Israel has responded with a barrage of airstrikes, with Palestinian officials saying more than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed. Israel says that figure includes hundreds of Hamas fighters.

Israel has called up about 360,000 reservists and is expected to launch a ground offensive in Gaza, warning residents of northern Gaza to evacuate Friday.