Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Ambassador Oren: Netanyahu will not allow the UN, or anyone to dictate our borders

(Haaretz).Israel's ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told reporters on Tuesday that Israel would not allow anyone to dictate its borders.

"Like Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu will not allow the United Nations, or any other organization, to dictate our borders. They will be determined through negotiations," he said in Washington during an event at the Chamber of commerce celebrating 25 years since the establishment of the Free Trade agreement between the U.S. and Israel.

"Today, too, Israel is blessed with principled and courageous leadership. While facing terrorist groups sworn to destroy every last one of us - women, children, senior citizens - and some 60,000 Hamas and Hezbollah rockets pointed directly at our homes; with so-called human rights organizations and boycott movements and campus coalitions denying our right to defend ourselves and even our right to exist, and with Iranian leaders swearing to wipe us off the map and striving to produce the nuclear means for doing that…. With all of those challenges, the Israeli government under PM Benjamin Netanyahu has not for a nanosecond reduced its commitment to peace".

"But not a peace at any price, Not a peace that will impair Israel’s security or impugn its identity as the nation state of the Jewish people. As Netanyahu said last year in his Bar-Ilan speech, he will not allow any future Palestinian state to become another Lebanon or Gaza."