SOUTH AFRICA REDUX:

In July 2013, shortly after leaving his post running CENTCOM, Mattis said the current situation in Israeli was "unsustainable" and that settlements were obstructing the possibility of a two-state outcome between Israelis and Palestinians, comments that seem to fly in the face of Trump's position as reported by his Israel advisers.

"The current situation is unsustainable," Mattis told CNN's Wolf Blitzer during a panel discussion at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado when asked about the peace process. "It's got to be directly addressed. We have got to find a way to make the two-state solution that Democrat and Republican administrations have supported. We've got to get there, and the chances for it are starting to ebb because of the settlements, and where they're at, they're going to make it impossible to maintain the two-state option."

Mattis specifically warned that if Israel continued to expand its settlement presence, its long-term character as a Jewish and democratic state would be at risk, ultimately leading to Israel becoming an apartheid state.

"If I'm in Jerusalem and I put 500 Jewish settlers out here to the east and there's 10,000 Arab settlers in here, if we draw the border to include them, either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say the Arabs don't get to vote -- apartheid," he said.

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