Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) addressed Sunday the repeated mortar and rocket strikes from Syria which have struck Israeli territory on the Golan Heights over the past week.
The Defense Minister said that Iran is attempting to construct factories for the production of precision missiles for the Hezbollah terrorists in London. The factories would allow Hezbollah to manufacture missiles without Iran needing to smuggle them through Syria, a process which Israel has allegedly disrupted by destroying weapons shipments meant for Hezbollah.
We are aware of this and know what needs to be done," Liberman said in a conversation with military correspondents. "This is a significant phenomenon and we can not ignore it, but we have opened a large gap with Hezbollah since 2006. There is no need to go into either hysteria or euphoria on this matter."
Liberman then turned to the spillover of fire from the Syrian Civil War into Israel. "We are speaking about the very difficult fighting in recent days on the part of the rebels, who want to regain control of the new Quneitra Governorate, and the Syrian army is responding accordingly."
The Defense Minister said that while Israel supported a negotiated solution to the Syrian Civil War, we will not accept any agreement that the Iranians are involved in, and that Assad will remain in place and in his position [as ruler of all of Syria]. It is true that we are not always asked and we are not an authority in this issue, but that is how we feel."
Moving onto internal matters, Liberman addressed the criticism of the plan to allow the Arab town of Qalqiliya in Samaria to double in size and to expand from Area A into Area C, which is under full Israeli administrative control. According to the Defense Minister, those who have objected to the plan do not understand the situation.
"We approved a plan that [only approves construction] within the wall surrounding the city, from which there were no terror attacks during the last Intifada except for a single stabbing attack, and it is not even clear that [the attack] originated from Qalqilya.
"There are 230,000 Palestinians living in this area of Judea and Samaria, and we also have to worry about them," added the Defense Minister.
He said that Israel had no interest in getting involved in a conflict with either Lebanon or Syria, but reiterated that it would respond harshly to any spillover and would continue to work to maintain its deterrence.
"Both Lebanon and Syria are aware of the depth of our intelligence, and I suggest that no one examine us," Liberman declared.