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Prime Minister Netanyahu Addresses the U.S. Congress

(Prime Minister's Office) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a joint session of Congress on Tuesday: Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East. Israel fully supports the desire of Arab peoples in our region to live freely. We long for the day when Israel will be one of many real democracies in the Middle East. In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel. No distortion of history can deny the four-thousand-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land. The Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace in which they will be neither Israel's subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as a free, viable and independent people in their own state. So why has peace not been achieved? Because so far, the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state, if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it. Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state. I stood before my people and I said: "I will accept a Palestinian state." It is time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say: "I will accept a Jewish state." The vast majority of the 650,000 Israelis who live beyond the 1967 lines reside in neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem and Greater Tel Aviv. Under any realistic peace agreement, these areas, as well as other places of critical strategic and national importance, will be incorporated into the final borders of Israel. In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel's borders. But as President Obama said, the border will be different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. Israel will not return to the indefensible lines of 1967. As for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths in the city. Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. I know that this is a difficult issue for Palestinians. But I believe with creativity and goodwill a solution can be found. If Israel simply walked out of the territories, the flow of weapons into a future Palestinian state would be unchecked. Missiles fired from it could reach virtually every home in Israel in less than a minute. Imagine that right now we all had less than 60 seconds to find shelter from an incoming rocket. Would you live that way? Would anyone live that way? Well, we aren't going to live that way either. So it is therefore absolutely vital for Israel's security that a Palestinian state be fully demilitarized. And it is vital that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River.
2011-05-25 00:00:00
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