SALT LAKE CITY — First thing Tuesday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, will be on a plane headed back to Washington.
But he's bringing home a new perspective when it comes to U.S. foreign policy with Israel — a perspective he says you can only get by going to the border, meeting with leaders who are eternally at odds and seeing that unexploded rocket embedded in the earth.
And that perspective becomes this: For Israel and Palestine, there is no easy solution.
"If it was easy, it would have been done a long time ago," said Chaffetz, who returned to Utah from a weeklong foreign policy visit to Israel on Monday.
Chaffetz spent Congress' Fourth of July recess visiting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and touring Israel's borders with Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, areas that have been the source of contention in the region.
The trip was paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, which sponsors similar trips for members of Congress.
The past week's trip was the Utah congressman's second trip to Israel and his second foreign trip this summer. Over the Memorial Day recess, Chaffetz went on a similar sponsored trip to Tunisia to learn about Islam in government.
Chaffetz said he has tried to beef up his foreign policy knowledge so he can make informed votes in Congress.
During the past week, Netanyahu said he would travel to Egypt to ask for help to persuade the Palestinian Authority to agree to direct peace talks.
Chaffetz said Netanyahu makes a compelling case for such talks.
"If you can't sit together, how are you going to live together?" Chaffetz said. "The leaders are 10 miles apart. They need to start direct negotiations."
That's a sentiment recently expressed by President Barack Obama during his meeting with Netanyahu — a meeting that Netanyahu told Chaffetz and the other seven members of Congress was encouraging.
But Fayyad seemed less inclined to engage in direct peace talks, Chaffetz said.
Chaffetz said there were no incidents in Israel during the visit, but it gave him pause when a local police commander said rocket attacks normally happen every three days. However, it had been 10 days since the most recent attack.
A bright spot of the visit was following up with security in the West Bank, where the U.S. has helped train local police.
"Violence in the West Bank has diminished," Chaffetz said he learned.
The program started under President George W. Bush and has been continued by Obama, he said.
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