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Netanyahu: What If Our Peace Interlocutors Are Ousted the Way They Were Ousted from Gaza?

(Prime Minister's Office) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - Prime Minister Netanyahu told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations meeting in Jerusalem on Wednesday: We've said from day one, 10 months ago when we formed the government: let's begin negotiations for peace now. There is a growing consensus by the international community who figured out that Israel wants to negotiate and is eager to resume peace talks, and that the Palestinians are the ones who are refusing to do this. At the end of the day, to complete the talks, we will raise the issue of legitimacy: the acceptance by the Palestinian side of the Jewish State of Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, as a legitimate entity, and conferring that legitimacy from the leadership down to all levels of Palestinian society. After all, we have some attachment to this place. It goes back quite a while. If you visit my office, you will see a signet ring found next to the Western Wall. It dates back 2,800 years. It has the name of an official from the time of the Kings of Israel. The name of that official is "Netanyahu." Netanyahu Ben-Yoaresh. That's my last name. My first name goes back 1,000 years earlier - Benjamin also walked these hills. We walked out of Gaza, Iran promptly walked in, just as it walked in with Hizbullah in the places we vacated in Lebanon. If we want to have security with a future Palestinian state, we must ensure that that state does not become another Hamastan or another Hizbullah enclave, another enclave of Iran from which they would fire missiles deep into our territory and dispatch terrorists and other attacks. We must have an effective block for the inflow of weapons and an effective block ultimately must mean Israeli presence on the eastern side of a prospective Palestinian state. It has to be demilitarized, but part of the way that it will be demilitarized is for there to be an Israeli presence. Do we know that our peace interlocutors won't be ousted the way they were ousted from Gaza by Iran's proxies? The Palestinians have loaded obstacles and preconditions, demanding of us what they have not demanded from any government since 1994. They've initiated the attacks on us in what we call "lawfare" and what you call Goldstone, which is meant to deprive us of our legitimate right to self-defense against terrorists who fire on civilians while hiding behind civilians. And they have not tamed the incitement in their official, government-controlled media.
2010-02-18 08:44:05
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