Interview by Lally Weymouth
Saturday, February 28, 2009; A13
Israeli Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu sat down last week with Newsweek-Washington Post's Lally Weymouth — his first interview with foreign media since he was asked by President Shimon Peres to form Israel's next government. Excerpts:
Q. President Peres reportedly believes that you have matured since you served as prime minister in 1996.
A. One would hope. I think time has its uses. One of them is to reflect on your experiences and those of others. I have watched carefully the successes of governments and . . . [seek] to draw from those the elements of policy and leadership that will enable me to move Israel to a better future — one of peace, security and prosperity.
I propose a [new] way, which I believe can achieve progress: to continue political talks and at the same time advance the economic development that has begun and also strengthen the Palestinian security forces.
I personally intend to take charge of a government committee that will regularly address the needs of the Palestinian economy in the West Bank.
But economic progress is not a substitute for political progress.
It's not a substitute but in Northern Ireland it was an unbelievable facilitator for the Good Friday agreement and the others that followed.
So you think you can promote economic progress and political progress at the same time? And show a real difference between the West Bank and Gaza?
This is what has happened. In the recent conflict, the West Bank did not boil over. The people there cared about the loss of life in Gaza, but they said, "We do not want to go that route. We have the beginnings of economic development in Jenin and we do not want an Islamic fundamentalist regime." They'd like a society with law and order.
Didn't President Abu Mazen and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad control the West Bank?
There was that, too. But I don't think any amount of local control could have overcome an eruptive popular sentiment.
What do you say when asked if you believe in a two-state solution as George Bush outlined in 2002?
Substantively, I think there is broad agreement inside Israel and outside that the Palestinians should have the ability to govern their lives but not to threaten ours.
Didn't you say that the recent Gaza operation did not go far enough and that Hamas should be toppled?
Hamas is incompatible with peace.
So what do you do about that?
I hope that the Palestinians in Gaza find the ability to change this regime because we want to have peace with all the Palestinians. Right now, what we should do is enable humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza but not in such a way as it enables Hamas to buy more rockets.
What kind of a signal does it send that [Sen. John] Kerry goes to Gaza, gets a letter from Hamas to President Obama and then flies off to Damascus?
Syria so far has been talking peace but has enabled Hezbollah to arm itself in contravention of U.N. Security Council resolutions with tens of thousands of rockets. Since the second Lebanon war it [has] hosted Khaled Meshal and other terrorist leaders and closely cooperated with the ayatollah regime in Iran against the interest of regional peace. . . .
I would talk to Syria about abandoning these courses of action and building confidence that they really want to move toward peace. So far they're not giving that impression. . . .
I find myself in the unusual position of being the only optimist. This has happened to me before. At the depths of the economic crisis in 2003, I had firm confidence that my policies would deliver Israel from the precipice of an economic catastrophe. And we did. Israel is now better placed than most Western countries in facing this economic storm.
That's thanks to what, your policies as finance minister?
I think it's a result of the policies we had then, which were not widely shared at the time. The banks are more solvent, and Israel's national macroeconomic position is in much better shape. In exactly the same way, I find myself advocating policies that are not yet understood. One that I'm serious about is achieving peace and security.
You're not the right-wing hawk they describe in the papers?
I'm the person who did the Wye agreement and the Hebron agreement in the search for peace. I think a lot of people at the time thought the problem was the Israeli government, specifically my own, and that Arafat was the solution and not the problem. That view has undergone some changes since then.
What about the Americans, [whose new government] may not be as friendly to your country as the Bush administration?
I've had two excellent meetings with President Obama. I've found him open to new ideas and seeking new ideas and a new path to achieve a successful outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and [to the situation] in the Middle East as a whole. . . . [H]e said to me that Iran's quest for nuclear weapons is unacceptable to the United States. He was very much interested in the ideas that I put forward to him on advancing a new path for peace. . . .
The arming of Iran with nuclear weapons would cause a great threat not only to Israel's security but the stability of just about every Arab government in the Middle East. Many Arab governments would enter into a nuclear arms race, and this is something that is inimical to the interests of all those who seek peace and security. If [we] want to achieve progress with the Palestinians, this is indissolvably linked with the preventing of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. I will continue the talks for peace with the Palestinians immediately, and I do not condition them in any way on the Iranian outcome, but . . . the international community should do everything in its powers to prevent Iran from acquiring weapons of mass death.
Do you think that short of military action it's possible to halt Iran's nuclear program?
Iran is considerably weaker than it was six months ago because of the economic crisis and the precipitous drop in the price of oil. . . . This regime is vulnerable to pressure that ought to be intensified. But none of these sanctions and other measures . . . would have much of an effect if the Iranians believe that a military option is off the table.
President Peres told me that you believe that your biggest mistake was not having made a national unity government with him back in 1996.
This is absolutely true. In retrospect, I should have sought national unity, and I'm seeking to correct that today. I just hope that my colleagues in the other parties understand the requirements that Israel faces today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022702278_pf.html
