President Reuven Rivlin reacted to reports of a "crisis" between the leaderships of the US and Israel Wednesday, in an interview he gave IDF Radio from Poland, where he is on his first state visit as president.
“Construction is not a provocation,” he explained. “If it is carried out as a provocation and as a payback of some sort for a terror act, it is forbidden. [But] we came to settle in our land and we simply have to make clear to the world that we are building in places that we shall never abandon,” he opined.
Rivlin, who is known for a relatively well-developed sense of humor, added: “The state of Israel has three principles that oblige it in its foreign relations – the first is relations with the United States. The second – relations with the United States. And the third thing, which is no less important – relations with the United States.
"And yet, the United States also understands that we have built Jerusalem and that Jerusalem will remain built, as it is at present, with all of its parts.”
In Warsaw, Rivlin took part Tuesday in the inauguration of a museum for the history of Polish Jewry, which tells the story of 1,000 years of Jewish life there.
“We cannot forget the Holocaust, and still, we also see the period in which Judaism developed as a very meaningful one, and therefore the opening of the museum is a very important thing, for the Jewish nation and for the state of Israel,” he told the military radio station.
After meeting the Polish president Tuesday he was scheduled to meet the prime minister Wednesday. “Especially here, in Poland, the Israeli position that says – even if we talk to everyone, what matters is what we talk about, not with whom – is understood,” he explained. “They accept the position that says it is unthinkable for any element in the world to negotiate over its own annihilation.”