Minister of Education and member of the Political-Security Cabinet Naftali Bennett spoke Tuesday at the 18th Conference of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.
"In the past few weeks, the media has been talking about an argument or a 'sharp confrontation,' as the commentators put it, in certain security forums," Bennett said. "The real argument is between two approaches - withdrawing from confrontation with the enemy or continuously confronting him, like a kind of lawnmower.”
"Withdraw from confrontation and gain momentary quiet and strengthening of the enemy, or continuously confront and gain long-term security. It's important for me to say in the clearest way: In our neighborhood, anyone who does not mow the lawn, the lawn mows him," stressed Bennett.
In recent weeks, Bennett has strongly criticized the agreement between Israel and Hamas led by Defense Minister Liberman and Prime Minister Netanyahu. "Hamas is trying to use the 'protection racket' method, that is, Hamas is burning fields and firing rockets at us and then coming up with a list of demands," Bennett said in an interview with FM 103.
"Our responsibility as the government of Israel is to uproot Hamas' ability to harm us," Bennett continued. "For the past 17 years in the Gaza region we have been living under rocket fire. We, as the government of Israel, have a responsibility that this will not happen. There is already generation enlisting in the army that was born under the rockets. We have to say that there is no magical solution, because it was a Likud government that removed Israel from Gush Katif - by the way, a party of forty seats. When the Likud has forty Knesset seats, they do heavy damage to the State of Israel like the evacuation of Gush Katif."