Silvan Shalom
We have the responsibility to protect our people and that's why we're building this fence. We've suffered from 19,000 terrorist attacks during the last three years.
Suicide bombers caused us more than 50 percent of our casualties. The fence works. There is a decline in the number of those terrorist attacks against Israelis.
There's no preventative measure between the Palestinians, between those terrorists to the state of Israel.
We have been in the territories since 1967. In 2002, we had sometimes three or four suicide attacks every day. We came to the conclusion that it can't continue like that.
The Palestinians are not willing to do anything, they're not willing to make the strategic decision to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorist organizations.
We believe that we should come to an agreement with the Palestinians. But we need two to tango.
The security fence is reversible. Human lives are irreversible.
We would like to ease the life of the Palestinians. I prepared a new plan that we call a positive agenda.
We are not going to damage our safety and our security. We're not going to give those extremists the privilege to come so freely to Israel in order to carry out more attacks against us and kill us one day after another.
No one can compare us to the apartheid regime. It's not like in South Africa between the blacks and the whites who belong to the same nation, or in Berlin where you find parents living on the eastern side and their children in the western side.
I'd like to ask you: what you would prefer us to do? I'd like to ask my colleagues, would any other country act differently? I think the answer is very clear. No one would act differently.
In 1988, King Hussein of Jordan said that it doesn't take any connection any more to those territories, and he would like to split from those territories. So according to the international law, it doesn't belong to anyone.
Most of the international community, most of the countries around the world, don't want any side, any party to take unilateral steps. They would like that all of us to stick to the road map.
The Palestinians will never, never implement their commitment to dismantle their infrastructure of terrorist organizations.
Cease-fire is important, but it can last only for a very, very, very short time.
In my view, Arafat is the only Palestinian in the world that isn't willing to have an independent Palestinian state.
It's not a democracy here, it's the Middle East.
There is no taboo after this assassination and no one of the Palestinian leaders has immunity anymore, ... It shows once again the necessity to collect the illegal weapons and to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorist organizations.Collection: Organization