Romney: Lay Off 'Settlements'; It's A 'Private' Issue

Here.

It's a private manner that should not give Israel's enemies cause to use other means (i.e., violence and terror I presume)

From CNN:

The sensitive issue of Israeli settlement construction in the Palestinian West Bank is something that should be "discussed in private," Mitt Romney said in an interview with CNN Monday.

"I believe that the issue of settlements is something which should be discussed in private by the American president and our allies," Romney told Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room." "When we show diplomatic distance between ourselves and our ally, I think we encourage people who oppose that relationship to seek other means to achieve their ends."

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UPDATE

There's

...a theological dimension to his support of Israel. Along with American evangelicals, Mormons like Romney have long been hawkish on the Jewish state, as well as frequent visitors to the Holy Land, making pilgrimages to sites like the Western Wall, Mount of Olives, and the Garden of Gethsemane. Mormons share with many Christians and Jews a belief that Israel is an integral part of their own biblical-era past and humanity’s inevitable apocalyptic future. But it’s precisely their theological and social differences from other religions that require Mormons, including Romney, to negotiate a number of pitfalls whenever they are in Israel...Matthew Bowman, author of The Mormon People, explains that church historian and Mormon president “Joseph Fielding Smith adopt[ed] a somewhat Scofield-esque interpretation—the restoration of the state of Israel is a necessary predicate for the Second Coming.” But more recently, says Bowman, Mormon end-times rhetoric has become less explicit, “largely reduced to moralism… [that] the world is growing increasingly sinful.” 

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