(Prime Minister's Office) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting EU foreign policy representative Federica Mogherini on Friday: "Militant Islamic incitement is trying to fan violence in Israel, and especially in Jerusalem and especially on the Temple Mount, with the effort of changing the status quo on the Temple Mount....We are faced with a consistent campaign of vilification and slander that presents Israel as seeking to undermine the [al-Aqsa] mosque, to change the procedures that are there. This is absolutely not our policy. We stand behind the status quo arrangements that have been there for many years." "At the same time, we've watched with growing concern the fact that Islamist parties...have joined in a campaign of inflammation, calling for any action, including violent action, to stop Jews from exercising their right to merely enter the Mount. This is an arrangement that has been there for many decades, since the Six-Day War. We stand by the rights of Jews to go to the Mount." "The bogus claim that this conflict persists...because of this or that settlement is false because I believe that the issue is not about territory; it's about our existence. It's about the failure to recognize Israel in any boundary, in any border, in any configuration. That was and remains the core of this conflict, that is, the persistent refusal to recognize that the Jewish people have a right to a state of their own." "The Palestinians expect us to recognize that they have a right to a state of their own, yet they say to the Jewish people who have been here for close to 4,000 years, from the time of Abraham: You do not have a right for a state of your own. That's absurd." "To accord, as some European countries have, recognition to a Palestinian state without demanding an equal recognition on their part to the nation-state of the Jewish people is irresponsible. To give recognition to a Palestinian state that doesn't either recognize the Jewish state or agrees to security arrangements that are necessary for its security and survival is irresponsible."
2014-11-10 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive