Remarks by PM Netahyahu (Israel) at State Department, Washington DC

Thank you, Madame Secretary. I want to thank you and President Obama for the many efforts that you´ve invested to bring us to this moment.
Paragraph-1 Contains

My friend, Senator Mitchell, thank you for your consistent effort, for your and your staff´s efforts, to bring a lasting and durable peace to our region.
Paragraph-2 Contains

President Abbas, as I said yesterday in our meeting at the White House with the President of the United States, the President of Egypt and the King of Jordan, I see as you a partner for peace. Together, we can lead our people to a historic future that can put an end to claims and to conflict.
Paragraph-3 Contains

Now, this will not be easy. A true peace, a lasting peace, would be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides: from the Israeli side, from the Palestinian side — from my side, and from your side. But the people of Israel, and I as their prime minister, are prepared to walk this road and go a long way — a long way in a short time — to achieve a genuine peace that will bring our people security, prosperity and good neighbors — good neighbors — to shape a different reality between us.
Paragraph-4 Contains

That´s going to involve serious negotiations, because there are many issues in contention. The core issues that you outlined, Madame Secretary, are things that we have disagreements on; but we have to get from disagreement to agreement — a big task. Now, two years ago, or rather a year ago, in a speech I gave in Bar- Ilan University in Israel, I tried to outline the two pillars of peace that I think will enable us to resolve all the outstanding issues. And these are legitimacy and security.
Paragraph-5 Contains

Just as you expect us to be ready to recognize a Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
Paragraph-6 Contains

There are more than a million non-Jews living in Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, who have full civil rights. There is no contradiction between a nation state that guarantees the national rights of the majority and guaranteeing the civil rights, the full equality of the minority.
Paragraph-7 Contains

I think this mutual recognition between us is indispensable to clarifying to our two peoples that the conflict between us is over. I said, too, yesterday that a real peace must take into account the genuine security needs of Israel that have changed; they´ve changed since I was last here. You spoke about the veterans who are gathered here — around this table. We´ve been here before. We fashioned the Hebron agreement and the Wye Agreement.
Paragraph-8 Contains

Now, this was 12 years ago. In these 12 years, new forces have risen in our region, and we´ve had the rise of Iran and its proxies, and the rise of missile warfare. And so a peace agreements — a peace agreement must take into account security arrangement against these real threats that have been directed against my country — threats that have been realized with 12,000 rockets that have been fired on our territory and terrorist attacks that go unabated.
Paragraph-9 Contains

President Abbas, I am fully aware and I respect your people´s desire for sovereignty. I´m convinced that it´s possible to reconcile that desire with Israel´s need for security. We anticipate difficult days before we achieve the much-desired peace.
Paragraph-10 Contains

The last two days have been difficult. They were exceedingly difficult for my people and for me. Blood has been shed, the blood of innocents. Four innocent Israelis gunned down brutally, two people wounded, seven new orphans. President Abbas, you condemned this killing. That´s important. No less important is to find the killers, and equally to make sure that we can stop other killers. They seek to kill our people, kill our state, kill our peace.
Paragraph-11 Contains

And so achieving security is a must. Security is the foundation of peace. Without it, peace will unravel. With it, peace can be stable and enduring.
Paragraph-12 Contains

President Abbas, history has given us a rare opportunity to end the conflict between our peoples, a conflict that has been lasting for almost a century. It´s an unprecedented opportunity to end a century - - conflict. Well, there have been some examples in history, but not many.
Paragraph-13 Contains

But we face such a task - to end the bloodshed and to secure a future of promise and hope for our children and grandchildren. In the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, there is a story of how two brothers in conflict — brothers — Isaac and Ishmael — join together to bury their father, Abraham — our father, the father of our two peoples. Isaac, the father of the Hebrew nation, Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation, join together in a moment of pain and mutual respect to bury Abraham in Hebron.
Paragraph-14 Contains

I can only pray — and I know that millions around the world, millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians and many other millions around the world, pray — that the pain that we have experienced, you and us, in the last hundred years of conflict, will unite us not only in a moment of peace around a table of peace here in Washington, but will enable us to leave from here and to forge a durable, lasting peace for generations.
Paragraph-15 Contains

Shalom. Salaam. peace