Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Friday responded to a Palestinian Arab reporter who asked him at the Munich Security Conference about “Palestine” and said, “What you call Palestine is the land of Israel.”
The reporter, who said she is from Shechem (Nablus), asked Sa’ar about US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza and said it would result in Hamas being “outside of Palestine” where they will have much more visibility to mobilize.
“Israel took during the years very bold decisions, maybe mistaken, but bold decisions. Israel created the Palestinian Authority, bringing the PLO terrorists from Tunisia. Israel withdrew from all [of the] Gaza Strip. Israel more than gave a chance to [a] peace process with the Palestinians,” Sa’ar replied, then added, “I mean, the Palestinians never had, in the history of our country, never in history were sovereign in this land. What you call Palestine is the name that Caesar Adrianus gave to the land of Israel when he conquered it…So what you call Palestine is the land of Israel.”
“And it's a pity that in spite of all our efforts during all these years, we haven’t found a partner to go to real peace, but we had enemies that never abandoned the path of terrorism, incitement, and the will to destroy Israel was much stronger than the will to build their own state,” said Sa’ar.
He also spoke about the hostage release deal and made clear, “The war won't be over until we will bring all our hostages back home. Any hostage that comes back home to his family brings us closer to our objective. So it is very important…to continue to implement [the deal].”
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)