evening with the a look at the surprising elections in israel with david remnick, mort zuckerman, and dennis ross. >> i don't want us to be deluded and think because lapid somehow got an outsized amount of votes suddenly the country has moved dramatically to the left. it has not. it has not. and i think we need to have a more tragic sense of what's going on in terms of the palestinian question, which is the one that concerns us the most. certainly it is in the top three of the big questions about israel. and there's not going to be dramatic movement on that at all. >> rose: what happened in benghazi, and the israeli elections when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with secretary of state clinton on capitol hill. lawmakers questions her earlier today about the september 11, 2012 attacks on the american consulate in benghazi, libya. four americans were killed that day, including ambassador christopher stevens. secretary clinton's testimony had been post toned until now. she took responsibi

lakeland's dennis ross among the gop freshmen to tell john boehner no.g the freshman republicans who told john boehner that he would not be voting for the debt ceiling proposal. that was from the last time the house republicans threatened the country with defaulting on our debt back in 2011. dennis ross, you probably should have calibrated your place in line a little better. throw a democrat in there ahead of you when you realize that's what you're going to get. get there in time for the repeal prohibition amendment next time. that's more fun. if you have found yourself at home constitutionally -- forgive me, constitutionally incapable of getting excited over having another fight about the debt ceiling this year, if this isn't exciting because it just feels like groundhog day to you, oh my god, i've got reckless brinksmanship fatigue, it is true that it's hard to get excited over something we have done before. it is 2013 now. remember when it happened it was a total disaster. even if you just ignore the political consequences, if you just look at the eco

so the reverse of what dennis ross is talking about has happened. there's an increasingly hopelessness on both sides, even though we're not in the middle of some terrible intifada. >> it's a great paradox by the way. >> it is a great paradox. >> rose: some people say they might be--un, there may be the seeds of a third intifada developing. >> well, look, no one knows-- anyone who says it won't happen, it's the kind of thing you could light a match and spark is sent and it's triggered. i would say palestinians paid a terrible price for the second intifada and they have not recovered from it and they're anxious that something could still happen. the fact is both have that memory. the key right now is-- david put his fing or something i think is quite important-- you know, it's not just that the-- that you've had a split among the palestinian. you have a palestinian authority that is weakening. the israelis, from their own strategic standpoint, has an interest in what is the future of the israeli going to be. the possibility of resolving this conflict

evening with the a look at the surprising elections in israel with david remnick, mort zuckerman, and dennis ross. >> i don't want us to be deluded and think because lapid somehow got an outsized amount of votes suddenly the country has moved dramatically to the left. it has not. it has not. and i think we need to have a more tragic sense of what's going on in terms of the palestinian question, which is the one that concerns us the most. certainly it is in the top three of the big questions about israel. and there's not going to be dramatic movement on that at all. >> rose: what happened in benghazi, and the israeli elections when we continue. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with secretary of state clinton on capitol hill. lawmakers questions her the sep, 2012 attacks on the american consulate in benghazi, libya. four americans were killed that day, including ambassador christopher stevens. secretary clinton's testimony had been post toned until now. she took responsibility and emsized her commitme

dennis ross, senior director of the national security council and special adviser to secretary clinton w a big welcome to you, sir, what was your takeaway from the president's line we played from the inaugural address, what does it signal to you? >> i think there's been a continuity in the president's attitude, certainly in his approach to foreign policy. you'll recall from the beginning of administration, the word engagement was, in fact, a guidepost for how we were going to try to deal with adversaries as well as in terms of how you try to deal with resolving conflict. so, i think engagement as such is not new. there's als been a premise to that engagement. it's engagement without illusion. the president has looked at iran as a country that is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability and he's made it clear his objective is to prevent that, not to live with it. his preferred approach is to resolve it through peaceful means, resolve it by engaging with iranians, getting ourselves and others to engage, but to get the iranians to change their objective. the end result may be preferably achi