Sunday evening, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will deliver a major policy address at Bar-Ian University. Following is a suggested text.
Shalom Aleichem, my fellow Jews in Israel and around the world.
Salaam Aleikum to Arab citizens of the State of Israel.
May peace be upon to you to all law-abiding Christians who live in our country.
As U.S. President Barack Obama said in his speech at Cairo University 10 days ago, I have come here tonight to speak the truth and to put on the table issues that Israel faces and must deal with.
The issue of extremism threatens the entire world. Terror in the past several decades has become a popular and accepted method for evil people to achieve their goals. Religions, particularly the Muslim faith, have been usurped by terrorists who exploit the masses for their own personal financial gain. They use stock market manipulation, drug trafficking and arms smuggling for their own personal gains in the name of religion.
The next issue is that of the Palestinian Authority’s desire for an independent state. The PA, which is an outgrowth of the Palestine Liberation Organization, founded by arch terrorist Yasser Arafat, is basically dysfunctional. Its rule is divided, with the Fatah party based in Judea and Samaria and the rival Hamas terrorist party based in Gaza.
As such, talk of a “Palestinian state” is irrelevant, and that is only one of the dozens of reasons I have called on PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiators but have not accepted the idea of agreeing to a state that cannot exist. To do so would be a de facto approval for the current state of affairs in which the PA spreads incitement against Israel, teaches that all of the Land of Israel is Arab Palestine and refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
In fact, the PLO, which is the umbrella organization overseeing the PA, still does not recognize Israel at all.
Nevertheless, Israel time after time after time in the past few years has made ”good will” measures to the PA without any quid pro pro. Incitement continues. Terror remains rampant in the PA. The American-trained Fatah special forces, which Israel agreed could be deployed, with arms, in major Arab cities in Judea and Samaria, does not tackle terror except when it threatens the Fatah party.
The low number of terrorist attacks in Israel emanating from Judea and Samaria is due mainly to Israeli intelligence and counterterrorist actions, some of which are carried out in cooperation with the PA but not to the extent that it can be relied upon to maintain law and order.
Israel also has continued to transfer to the PA hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues collected for the PA, but economic growth and stability are a far cry from the years following the Six-Day War in 1967. Israeli supervision of Judea, Samaria and Gaza allowed an unprecedented rise in the standard of living after the occupying Jordanian and Egyptian governments had neglected the area and deprived its residents of basic rights,
My government, like previous governments of the State of Israel, accepts previous agreements.
The U.S. Roadmap plan had been the basis for negotiating with the PA on the final borders of a proposed PA state and the State of Israel. The Roadmap calls for those borders to be negotiated and we abide by that agreement.
Unfortunately, the PA, sometimes with help from other nations, has unilaterally brought about changes in the Roadmap and skipped over critical steps, such as the halt of incitement. While it does not carry out its obligations, Israel has continued to carry our own. We have removed dozens of roadblocks and checkpoints, often resulting in terrorist attacks or attempted attacks.
We have begun removing Jewish communities that were built after an agreement with the U.S. that no new communities would be built. However, every step Israel makes towards peace has been followed by new PA demands, which are presented as pre-conditions and as non-negotiable.
Negotiations cannot be carried out in an atmosphere under which one side states there is nothing to negotiate. The Arab world has made the Saudi Arabia 2002 Peace Plan a take it-or-leave-it proposition. It unreasonably expects Israel to meet all the demands in return for a promise of diplomatic recognition by the 22-member Arab League. At the same time, the League itself says it is not sure if it would recognize Israel and in any case will decide only after Israel carries out all of the irreversible steps that in effect threaten the security of our country.
The PA has been encouraged in this direction by many European countries who are threatened by Muslim dominance. They follow the same suicidal appeasement policy that allowed Hitler, may his name be erased, to threaten the entire free world with devastation.
The Nazi regime butchered, gassed and tortured six million Jews to death until the Allies, led by the U.S., defeated the regime of evil in 1945. Three years later, the State of Israel was re-established.
Inasmuch as we are speaking the truth, let it be clear, without any manipulation of facts, that the State of Israel was re-established and not established. It was first established nearly 3,000 years ago, and the original State of Israel fell to foreign conquerors and occupiers nearly 2,000 years ago.
We will not allow that to happen again.
Secondly, let it be perfectly clear that the State of Israel was re-established despite the Holocaust and not because of it. No people other than the Jews could overcome the trauma of nearly being annihilated and ignored by the world and still work under seemingly impossible threats and conditions to re-build a nation from scratch.
The People of Israel changed this barren land to a flourishing country that has contributed to the world far beyond what any other country has contributed on a per capita basis Our ability to do so does not go back to having survived the Holocaust; nor does it go back to surviving the Arab pogroms, such as the Hevron massacre in 1929 when Muslims went on a rampage and killed Torah scholars and students.
It does not go back to the breaking of promises by other nations who said they would encourage a Jewish state and then took every possible stop to prevent it.
Our ability goes back 3,500 years ago, which is more than 2,000 years before the Muslim religion was founded, with its religious capital in Mecca.
But Jews never have used religion as an excuse to bar other people from practicing their faith. Before Judea, Samaria and Gaza and the Golan Heights were restored to Israel in 1967, the occupying powers forbade the Christian and Jewish public from even visiting their holy sites. It was Israel that re-opened those sites in 1967.
Judaism is the only religion in the world that never has persecuted those who practice a different faith.
That brings us to one other issue that must be addressed— that of the 'refugees'. Tens of thousands of Jews throughout Arab countries have been displaced in the past 60 years. Their properties have been stolen and many have been executed simply because they were Jews.
In addition, properties legally recorded as bought by Jews, have been overrun by Arabs throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Land in Gaza, in eastern Jerusalem and in many parts of Judea and Samaria were legally bought by Jews before the re-establishment of the State of Israel but were confiscated by Arab occupiers.
Just as Israel recognizes the rights of Arabs to their houses that were legally bought, the same rights of Jews must be recognized.
The last issue I address is that of Iran. All of the talk the past two years about the threat that Iran will become a nuclear power is reminiscent of the talk during the period of appeasement to the Nazi regime. If the Western world wants to stop a new regime of evil from dominating the world and bringing catastrophe to the Free World, it must isolate Iran completely without ifs, ands or buts.
As President Obama said during his campaign for the presidency last year, "Yes, we can.”
Thank you
