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A Serious and Bold Effort to Conduct Negotiations
by Ehud Olmert
- I made a commitment to place on the public agenda a political process which would generate a deep and fundamental change in the pattern of relations between us and the Palestinians. The first stage in such a process is a serious effort to conduct negotiations with the authorized representatives of the Palestinian Authority, on condition that they would not include any elements involved in terrorist activity.
- I know that the proof on the ground is the essential precondition for any possibility for progress in the relations between us and the Palestinian Authority. I also know that the gap between the honest and fair will of President Abu Mazen and Prime Minister Salem Fayyad, and their ability at this time to translate it into a reality, is troubling and alarming.
- This November, an international meeting is expected to be held in the United States, with the aim of providing a backing to the process of dialogue between us and the Palestinians. The November meeting is not a conference which will replace bilateral, direct negotiations between us and the Palestinians. This meeting is intended to provide backing and encouragement and create a comprehensive umbrella of support for the direct process between us and them.
- The road to an agreement is still far and it is rife with pitfalls and difficulties. Terror from Gaza continues to run rampant. The terror organizations remain active in Judea and Samaria, and there will be no Israeli withdrawal whatsoever before it is eradicated there as well.
- We understand the hardship of the Palestinians and feel a deep empathy to the distress that many of them experienced as a result of our conflict. But they, too, will have to confront the need to relinquish the fulfillment of some of their dreams.
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert delivered this speech at the opening of the Knesset's winter session. (Prime Minister's Office)
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We Need Defensible Borders
by Binyamin Netanyahu
- The primary objective for our national defense has been and remains to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
- We have difficulty understanding why the government is using one hand to repel the Iranian nuclear threat while using the other to bring the
Iranian terror threat closer.
- The government plans a further withdrawal in Judea and Samaria a move that will inevitably create in the center of the country a third
Iranian base that will threaten Jerusalem and the entire coastal plain.
- I would like to believe that the government is truly convinced that its plan will bring peace, but in fact it will bring the opposite result.
- Without an Israeli military presence, Hamas will again easily overcome the Palestinian Authority, just as it did after the Gaza disengagement.
- How will people live in Jerusalem's Jewish neighborhoods - Neve Yaakov,
Pisgat Zeev, Ramot, the Jewish Quarter in the Old City - when Hamas controls the houses across the street?
- From there, they will be able to fire missiles directly at Israel's dense urban centers, Ben Gurion Airport, and Tel Aviv itself.This is not how you make peace. This is how you strengthen terror and bring it nearer.
Binyamin Netanyahu is leader of the opposition in the Knesset and delivered this speech at the opening of the Knesset's winter session. (IMRA)
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