Gingrich on Israel-Gaza conflict: End all this talk about the peace process

Sunday morning on ABC's This Week, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Israel should continue its aerial bombardment of Gaza and not worry about negotiating a cease fire agreement.

"Well, I think two things," he said. "One is, end all this talk about the peace process. You have a permanent war in the region. You have people determined to destroy Israel. They spend all the periods of non-war building up the weapons to have war, and then when they think it's appropriate, they wage war. And then they go back to saying, 'Oh, no, let's talk about a peace process while we accumulate more weapons.'"

"Second, I think the Israelis -- this is very deliberate, the Israelis have analyzed an Iranian wing of Hamas and an Egyptian wing," Gingrich continued "They are methodically destroying the Iranian wing. I think they will -- they will stop when they decide they've optimized their destruction, but they are very methodically killing people and taking out assets that relate -- these are -- these are Iranian rockets that are hitting Tel Aviv right now. They came in probably through Sudan."

Earlier this week, Israel Defense Forces killed the leader of Hamas's military wing with a missile strike. The incident marked the beginning of a wider campaign against Gaza militants in response to rocket attacks on Israeli towns. At least 32 Palestinian civilians and three Israeli civilians have been killed amid the conflict so far, according to the Associated Press.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) disagreed with the idea of giving up on the peace process.

"You want to be militarily strong so you don't have to go to war," he said. "And so whether it's Israel or it's the United States, you want to always be strong. But what you want to do is get to the negotiating table, because that's where you broker the best agreement. And so I think the president has been clear, he's been forceful. America is speaking with one voice, and we have to see us get back to the negotiating table."

Watch video, via Think Progress, below:

[Ed. note: Updated to include video]