(translated from Hebrew)
After meetings with Arab delegates:
I can say, after meeting many foreign ministers and other personalities, including from the Moslem world, during the last four days in New York, that no one is disturbed by the Palestinian problem – everyone in the Moslem world and in the Arab world is first of all worried about the Iranian problem.
I had a lot of meetings with senior officials from the Arab world, the Moslem world. With one state we even signed a renewal of diplomatic relations and three agreements in the areas of culture and health; a small country, but, they say, very beautiful and nice – the Maldives Islands, which have become a popular destination for Israelis.
About the Goldstone report:
I have already expressed myself very clearly on this subject – the Goldstone Report was pre-written. After all, we know all of its members, who had already expressed their opinion a while ago, during the [Gaza] Operation, that Israel had to absorb [the missiles] and had no right to respond, that [Israel’s action] was collective punishment. Also, the way the mandate was worded made its findings a foregone conclusion…[We decided] not to participate (although our people, people from Sderot and other places, went there, to the judge; he didn’t have to come here to meet them) – not to try to placate them or make excuses, not to give them legitimacy.
We saw the Durban Conference and also Durban II, with Ahmadinejad’s speech denying the Holocaust at the podium of the same Human Rights Council [that established the Goldstone Mission]. The states that set the tone in the Human Rights Council are very “democratic” states like Libya and Bangladesh. Also, seventy percent of the Council’s discussions deal with Israel – the western states have never even succeeded in having a discussion about the state of human rights in Zimbabwe.
Therefore, the council itself, as well as the judge and the people composing the committee – the report was already written before they even began to examine the facts.
Settlements issue
We don’t talk about “freezing” settlements. We talk about ensuring that the residents of Judea and Samaria can continue living a normal life. We have already canceled all the discounts and benefits that the residents of Judea and Samaria used to enjoy; the government has already suspended all kinds of projects and investments. If private individuals also are not allowed to build, they will be simply strangled.
Furthermore, all the residents of Judea and Samaria are citizens of the State of Israel, and we must take care of all our citizens, including those in Judea and Samaria as well as in the Negev and the Dan Region and the Galilee – each and every place. We cannot accept a dictate that we can’t build in the eastern part of the city [Jerusalem]. After all, no one demands that we prohibit Jerusalem’s Arab residents from buying or building or renting apartments in the western part of the city.
This is what we conveyed to the US and we hope they got the message.