by Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff
PM Benjamin Netanyahu decries Palestinian double talk, says leadership declares it wants to coexist with Israel while sending Palestinians a different message • Netanyahu: Iran threat has made cooperation with Arab countries "potent with possibilities."
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu speaks to Fox News interviewer Sean Hannity
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Photo credit: Fox News, screenshot  |
The first thing the Palestinian Authority must
do to prove it is committed to making peace with Israel is stop
rewarding terrorism and stop payments to terrorists and the families of
terrorists, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Sean Hannity of Fox
News in an exclusive weekend interview.
"On an annual basis, they're giving often
hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorists or the families of
terrorists who murdered Israelis, murdered Americans. It's
unimaginable," Netanyahu said.
"I think the first test of peace is to say to
them [the Palestinians], 'Hey -- you want peace, prove it. Confront
terrorism. Stop rewarding terrorism. Stop paying terrorists. And don't
finagle the books -- what they do is, 'OK, we won't pay it directly,
we'll pay it to somebody else and they'll pay it to the terrorists. ...
No. Come clean on this. Stop paying terrorists," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister told Hannity: "This is the
crazy thing: They pay terrorists on a sliding scale, not on the cost of
living, but on the cost of killing. The more you kill, the more you get.
And it accumulates to vast sums, some of it contributed by Americans,
by European governments. "
"It has to change. That's a test for peace. ... If they change, that's significant. That's hopeful," the prime minister said.
Netanyahu observed that the "true test" of the
Palestinians' intentions was not the declarations the Palestinian
leadership made to foreign governments, but what it said to its own
people.
"[Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud]
Abbas, to his own people he says, 'We don't want a state next to Israel,
we want a state instead of Israel.'"
Hannity observed that Netanyahu was "under pressure" from the world to make peace with Abbas.
"Fine. They don't have to pressure me. I want peace. I've been to war," Netanyahu replied.
When Hannity transitioned to the matter of
broader regional issues, particularly the unlikely alliances Israel has
formed with countries like Saudi Arabia in light of the growing threat
from Iran, Netanyahu said there was "no question" that the nuclear deal
with Iran paved the way "to eventual Iranian acquisition of the critical
elements of nuclear bombs, a nuclear arsenal."
Netanyahu called a nuclearized Iran "something we don't accept ... and won't let happen."
The prime minister explained that the fact
that "many in the region are threatened by that same Iran, and would be
immeasurably threatened more by a nuclear-armed Iran" has brought many
countries in the region to a "different thinking about Israel."
"I think this is potent with possibilities, ultimately for peace, but certainly for our common security," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister said that after holding
conversations with U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Defense Secretary
Jim Mattis, and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, "I think we
realize we face common challenges."
"The greatest challenge is the challenge of
militant Islam of both kinds, the Shiite variety led by Iran, the Sunni
variety led by ISIS [the Islamic State]. Both have to be rolled back,
but of the two, the greater long-term change is from Iran. It's a
country of 80 million, it's got oil. ... It's developing submarines,
it's developing precision-guided rockets and missiles. It's developing
nuclear weapons, down the line. Satellites," Netanyahu said, adding that
power of that kind in the hands of a "militant Islamic regime" posed a
threat to the entire world.
"A lot [of people] in the Arab world understand that, we
in Israel understand that, and I can say today that Washington
understands that. That's an important change," Netanyahu said.
Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=41933
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