(Prime Minister's Office) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem on Monday: "If Iran perches itself as a threshold state in which it has all the elements of a nuclear weapon in place, they'll just have to do one little twist of the knob to get final enrichment of fissile material that is the core of a nuclear weapon. Then all they'll have to do is take these components...put them together and in a very short time, days or weeks or perhaps even hours, they'd have a nuclear weapon....Our goal is to prevent Iran from having the capacity to manufacture or put together nuclear weapons." "[The Iranians] don't need ICBMs - long-range, inter-continental ballistic missiles....There's only one purpose in the world to develop ICBMs....You develop an ICBM in order to deliver a nuclear payload. Iran continues to develop that." "How much time has been saved by the interim deal?...They've been sent back in time [by] four weeks. That's what Iran has given to the world, which means it's given practically nothing, but Iran has received a great deal. It's received the easing of sanctions." "We're trying to make peace with those Palestinians who at least have not engaged in terror and we say to them, if you want to achieve a real peace, then that peace has to be based on a real reconciliation with the Jewish State of Israel. I appreciate the effort, I must say ceaseless efforts, that Secretary John Kerry is engaging in with me." "The Palestinians expect us to recognize a nation state for the Palestinian people. How do they have the temerity not to recognize the Jewish state, the nation state of the Jewish people? Do they not know that we've been here for the last 3,800 years?...They can try to distort ancient history and modern history...but it doesn't make it true. This is the Land of Israel. We've been here on this land, associated with it for millennia." "Why do they insist on not recognizing us? There is a reason. Because once you accept the fact that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, then you have no more claims on this land and on this country....The minute you agree to the formulation of two nation states, a Jewish state for the Jewish people and a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people, you end all claims."
2014-02-18 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive