(Al Jazeera-English-IMRA) David Frost - Israeli Spokesperson Mark Regev was interviewed by Al Jazeera on Jan. 8, 2010: Q: The Gazan situation is still horrible....When will their lot improve? Regev: Every day over a hundred trucks enter Gaza with foodstuffs and medicines and so forth. We are ensuring that there are no shortages in Gaza of vital humanitarian supplies that the people there need. Are there sanctions on Gaza? There are, and those sanctions will remain as long as the regime in Gaza is, first of all, holding one of our young servicemen hostage, and he has been held now for more than three and a half years, and also as long as the regime there is committed to destroying Israel and killing Israelis. Ultimately the people of Gaza are under the thumb of a very brutal authoritarian regime that puts its own extremist political agenda ahead of the well-being of the people of Gaza. If the regime there stopped being so hostile, we wouldn't have to respond. Q: What is the fear about Iran and Iran's nuclear capacity? Regev: There's a consensus today, a consensus from Moscow to Berlin to Washington to Ottawa to Tokyo to Canberra, a consensus internationally, I would also say, among the Arab world, that sees the Iranian nuclear program as not being benign at all. I think there's an acceptance, a consensus in the international community, that the Iranians are after a bomb. And we say now is the time for international pressure on that regime. It's time to upgrade. Iran today without nuclear weapons is a force for instability and violence in the region. Now, imagine that Iran armed with nuclear weapons, with Iranian proxies armed with a nuclear umbrella behind them. I mean, this would be the end of the Middle East situation as we know it. This would be a threat to our Arab neighbors; it would be a threat to the West; it would be a threat, of course, to my country, Israel. And that's why I think you've seen a whole series of UN Security Council resolutions. All members of the United Nations Security Council have passed a whole series of resolutions, many of them unanimously, calling on the Iranians to cease nuclear enrichment, to stop trying to build bombs. It's not an Israeli position. This is an international consensus.
2010-01-19 09:08:52Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive