CNN telephone interview with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - interviewed by Christiane Amanpour
January 4, 2009
Q: What resistance has Hamas put up?
FM Livni: They expected our military operation. We know that they have troops. It is a small army there, they used the troops in order to smuggle more and more weapons, not only missiles. They attacked our forces with mortar shells and we know that there are explosives in different places, not only within the city, but in places in which they expect Israeli soldiers to come.
Q: Have they been trying to kidnap soldiers?
FM Livni: Oh yes, they announced that. They warned Israel not to enter into the military operation because they would kidnap soldiers.
Q: But they did try to?
FM Livni: Oh yes.
Q: How long can this go on?
FM Livni: Until we have made Hamas weaker, until we know that they understand that Israel is not willing to live in a reality in which our citizens are being targeted. And this is a combination of the military ability and the motivation and we are working on both sides.
Q: You are sounding quite upbeat about it and some other Israelis officials sound quite upbeat, but I remember this same atmosphere at the beginning of your war with Hizbullah in 2006. It is widely believed that this war was very badly handled. In fact, you yourself criticized the prime minister for his handling of the Hizbullah war. Why should this one be any different?
FM Livni: Because Israel is a state in which we learn from our own experience. I know that.
Q: You say it will help the peace process. But every time Israel goes to war, whether it is against Hizbullah or whether it is against Hamas, it does in fact end up helping those who are the victims or the targets of the war, particularly, given how many civilians are being killed by your forces in Gaza.
FM Livni: I can understand that, the reality - not only the pictures coming from Gaza, but the the reality - can provoke demonstrations in different parts of the world, especially in the Arab world. I can understand the empathy that the public and public opinion in different parts of the world feel towards the Palestinians. We are not fighting the Palestinians - we are fighting Hamas, a terrorist organization which controls the Gaza Strip. True, there are also civilian casualties, but we are trying to avoid civilian casualties, even though it is not easy, while Hamas is targeting our civilians.
Q: Now, four Israelis have been killed, that’s a very, very bad thing and everybody knows that most people accept that Hamas has provoked your incursion. However, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed. Many of them are children, many of them are women. More than 2,000 have been wounded. Many of them children, many of them women and elderly men. There are a lot of civilians among the casualties. What are you going to do to avoid that, and can you, in this case?
FM Livni: What we are doing is trying to avoid that, and we are putting our soldiers at risk because there are targets that we did not want the air force to hit from the air in highly populated areas - this is what we are doing.
Q: The Palestinian Authority has complained very bitterly about the disproportionate use of Israeli force. What is your view on the proportionality of your response?
FM Livni: I would like to say that I cannot understand the nature of the proportionality that is needed. I mean, they targeted a school last week in Beersheba, in Israel. Do you think that the proportionate reaction is to target a school there? We are not going to do this. They are targeting civilians - are not going to do this. So the only measure that we are taking is to have them understand that this needs to be stopped. This is the expression of a state's right of self defense. We tried a truce. We decided not to target at all; we decided not to retaliate at all. It didn’t help. So, this time we needed to say that, yes, we are not answering one to one - one mortar, one missile will come from Israel. This needs to be stopped. So the question of proportionality, I think, is being misused against Israel.
Q: You said that proportionately is being misused against Israel, but you yourself know that it is a player in this game, because the street is going to dictate how long you can keep this up.
FM Livni: Yes, I agree. The street, especially in the Arab world, and also in Europe as well, can affect the choices of leaders who understand. The international leaders understand what we are doing. There are other parts of the world where other states are fighting terror as we are doing now in the Gaza Strip. So, to answer your direct question, yes. Clearly some of the international leadership is going to be affected by public opinion, maybe by the press. And the pressure upon Israel is going to become stronger in the next few days, I believe.
Q: Many people are calling for a cease fire. Will you accept a cease fire?
FM Livni: There is one thing that frustrates me - idea of saying something like, "Israel and Hamas need to stop; there must be a cease fire between Israel and Hamas." It is not the same. I am not willing to put Israel and Hamas in the same package or even use the same wording because, as you said before, we are expressing our right of self-defense. Israel is a state which is a member of the international community, while Hamas is a terrorist organization. Israel acts against Hamas because it targets Israel and they know what to do in order to stop it.
Q: So you are going to continue until they stop?
FM Livni: They need to stop.
Q: And if they don’t?
FM Livni: Israel will take the necessary steps. It can be during this operation, it can be done later, but at the end of the day, they need to understand that we are determined this time to change the reality for our citizens. The idea is not to act against the population in the Gaza Strip and it is not about who controls the Gaza Strip, as long as we can live in peace and quiet in Israel.