A: Excuse me, I need to protect my safety; this is my first priority. Following the establishment of the fence, I would pull out the settlers and the soldiers. Behind the fences I would create a Judenrein or Israelenrein territory; if Jews would want to live there and if they get the Palestinian approval for it, they may go ahead and live there.
Q: Only a defeat in the battlefield will bring Israel to sign an agreement which supports a total evacuation of the settlements. In such a case, there is not going to be a need for Israel’s agreement to it anyway.
A: I am not suggesting evacuating all the settlements. I have no problem whatsoever with annexing 50 percent of the settlers.
Q: [Do you consider] Gilo [an Israeli neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem, which has been under constant fire in the recent few months from the Palestinian town of Beit Jallah] a settlement?
A: Of course it is a settlement, a settlement that must be annexed into Israel’s territory. I’ll be even more pungent: I believe that we should annex the Har Homa neighborhood, a neighborhood against which my movement fought a stupid campaign. Har Homa has a territorial contiguity with the state of Israel. To say that Har Homa disturbs the contiguity of the Palestinian territory and to turn this in to a possible cause for war is rubbish, it’s stupidity.
Q: The security fence that you are proposing will not be capable of preventing shootings at some neighborhoods in Jerusalem and Bat Hefer. If this happens, what would we do then?
A: [In my scenario] this [the Palestinian territory] would be a sovereign state and they will not be able to use the excuse of Tanzim activists shooting.
Q: It happens that sovereign states open fire on other sovereign states.
A: In that case, we would go in and take care of business.
Q: At Camp David, when Barak agreed for the “right of return” of [Palestinian] refugees, the media reported that it was agreed that 100,000 refugees would return. Do you find this acceptable?
A: I object to the “right of return” and I struggled with members of my movement who tried to put forth all kinds of formulas regarding the subject….My argument is based on the notion that nationalism is a necessary evil. It is true today and it will remain true for the next few centuries. Nationalism is an idea based on people living separately and not mixed with other nations. We already have a 20 percent Arab minority, and this is a very substantial minority, almost unprecedented in normal nation states. In our case, the situation is further complicated by the fact that this minority is tied to the struggle of enemies from the outside. Nations [with such internal complexities] usually fall apart. Every refugee we will allow to come in here would increase the size of the minority and exacerbate this problem.
Reported by Giyora Eylon, Iton Yerushalayim. Translation copyright Middle East Media & Research Institute (MEMRI)