(CNN) Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett interviewed by Christiane Amanpour - Amanpour: "It's a constant cycle of killing, bloodshed...there doesn't seem to be any attempt to negotiate an end to the actual conflict." Bennett: "Well, first of all, the way the facts were presented is not accurate. Israel is peaceful. And about a month ago, unfortunately, a new wave of terror was thrown upon the Israeli public....Arab Muslim terrorists, some of them affiliated with ISIS, just came with rifles and started shooting people on the street. This is unacceptable. So I object to the notion of both sides. No. When they don't attack us, we have no issues with them. But when they do attack us, I have to fight back and hit them at their terror bases." Amanpour: "When Palestinians see and when your region sees Israeli soldiers inside that [al-Aqsa] mosque, it creates a lot of tension, a lot of unease. Why do you allow Israeli soldiers to go into that mosque?" Bennett: "Christiane, there you go again starting the story in the middle. But the actual fact is that, last Friday, at about 5:00 in the morning, roughly 300 Palestinian rioters entered the Temple Mount Mosque with explosives, with stones. They began desecrating their own mosque, burning, throwing stones, and preventing about 80,000 decent Muslims from going to pray. My responsibility as prime minister of Israel is to provide freedom of prayer to everyone in Jerusalem, including Muslims, which is why I had to send in policemen to remove the rioters. And it worked. Indeed, 80,000 Muslims went on later to pray peacefully." Amanpour: "Your own Israeli security people" say they are concerned about "settler terrorism." Bennett: "What you have been projecting is blatantly false....because it's a lie, simply a lie." Amanpour: "You cannot say that to me. You cannot tell me I'm lying." Bennett: "You are misrepresenting the facts. It's a tiny minority. And I object to the symmetry that you're trying to create here....Who's getting murdered? We're seeing Palestinians murder Israelis. We're not seeing Israelis murdering Palestinians. And that's why there's no symmetry here."
2022-04-21 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive