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Your involvement in the Middle East and personal contribution to the efforts towards resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been significant. The vision which you outlined in your historic speech of June 2002 of two democratic states living side by side in peace and security, is the basis of any progress towards a solution in this region.
Your unreserved support of the Disengagement Plan and your letter of April 2004 to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – and I join you in praying for his recovery – were the basis for the success of its implementation.
What you immediately recognized to be an historic step, was later adopted by all those who were skeptical in the beginning.
I intend to exhaust every possibility to promote peace with the Palestinians, according to the Roadmap, and I extend my hand in peace to Mahmoud Abbas, the elected president of the Palestinian Authority. I hope he will take the necessary steps, which he committed to, in order to move forward.
Unfortunately, the rise of Hamas, a terrorist organization which refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and regards terrorism as a legitimate tool, severely undermines the possibility of promoting a genuine peace process.
As you stated, Mr. President, the Palestinian Authority headed by Hamas government must abandon the path of terrorism, dismantle the terror infrastructure, honor agreements and recognize Israel's right to exist.
By doing so, they will find us a willing partner in peace. However, we will not enter into any kind of partnership with a party which refuses to recognize our right to live in peace and security.
Despite our sincere desire for negotiations, we cannot wait indefinitely for the Palestinians to change. We cannot be held hostage by a terrorist entity which refuses to change or to promote dialogue.
If we come to the conclusion that no progress is possible, we will be compelled to try a different route. I have presented to the President ideas which, I believe, could help advance his vision and prevent a political stalemate.
According to these ideas, we will remove most of the settlements which are not part of the major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria.
The settlements within the population centers would remain under Israeli control and become part of the state of Israel as part of a final status agreement.
This process of "realignment" would reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians, ensure territorial contiguity for the Palestinians, and guarantee Israel's security as a Jewish state with the borders it desires.
The implementation of these ideas would only be possible with the comprehensive support of the United States and the international community. I anticipate working with you to explore ways to advance this.
We discussed the Iranian issue. The Iranian regime, which calls for Israel's destruction, openly denies the Holocaust and views the United States as its enemy, makes every effort to implement its fundamentalist religious ideology, and blatantly disregards the demands of the international community.
The Iranian threat is not only a threat to Israel. It is a threat to the stability of the Middle East and the entire world, and it could mark the beginning of a dangerous and irresponsible arms race in the Middle East.
Mr. President, we appreciate your efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, including through the UN Security Council. They are of crucial importance.
The international community cannot tolerate a situation where a regime with a radical ideology and a long tradition of irresponsible conduct, becomes a nuclear weapons state. This is a moment of truth; it is still not too late to prevent it from happening.
I thank you again for your gracious hospitality and for our discussions. I look forward to continue working with you, Mr. President.
Thank you very much.
Press Conference PM Olmert with President Bush - Questions and Answers:
PRIME MIN. OLMERT: Thank you, Mr. President.
Indeed, the government Sunday decided to spend 50 million shekels buying medical equipment -- 50 million shekels -- about $11 million -- for the time being -- to buy medical equipment and drugs needed for the hospitals in Gaza. And as I said during the Cabinet meeting, we will spend any amount of money needed in order to save lives of innocent Palestinians suffering from the indifference of their government. We will not hesitate to do it. We will use the revenues that we have collected, and more if necessary, and we will make arrangements, together with our friends, so that the supplies will arrive directly to those who need them. This is a humanitarian commitment. We are absolutely committed to help innocent people that suffer from the brutality and the intransigence of their own government. And we will continue to do it at all times. Thank you, Mr. President.
Q Mr. Prime Minister, are you satisfied from what you have learned out of your meeting with the president with regard of the Iranian issue? And what's your message to the Israeli public about this issue?
PRIME MIN. OLMERT: The Iranian issue was discussed, indeed, between the president and myself and we'll continue to talk about it later.
Obviously, there is a major threat posed, as I have said already and the president said, by the Iranians and their attempts to have non-conventional capabilities and also to build up delivery systems and the ballistic missiles that can hit major centers all across Europe, not just in the Middle East. This is something that needs to be stopped.
We discussed this issue at length, and there is a total agreement and understanding between the president and myself that there is a need to stop it. And we reviewed the different ways how to do it, and I am very satisfied with what I heard from the president and on what we agreed that we will continue to do in order to achieve this goal.
PRIME MIN. OLMERT: Aluf Ben, Ha'aretz (sp.)
Mr. Prime Minister, can you give us some assessment of the time that you are willing to wait for the emergence of a Palestinian partner?
PRIME MIN. OLMERT: Well, first of all, I want to emphasize again what I said before, and what I said before the elections and immediately after the elections in Israel, and when my government was inaugurated in the Knesset just a couple of weeks ago. I said we will make a genuine effort to negotiate with the Palestinian side on the basis of the road map, which is the framework for future negotiations towards, hopefully, a peace agreement between us and the Palestinians. I meant precisely what I said. I will make every possible effort. And in order to examine it carefully and seriously, I will certainly meet with the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. We haven't yet decided about the timing. It will be in the near future. And I will do everything that I can in order to help create the necessary circumstances for such negotiations to take place, providing, of course, that the Palestinian partner will have to -- not just to make a public commitment, but to be able to deliver on the basic requirements of the road map and the Quartet decisions, mainly to recognize the state of Israel and its right to exist as a Jewish state, to unarm the terrorist organizations, and to implement all the obligations of the agreements signed between the state of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
So, we will make an effort. And I say time and again, that we accept the sincerity of Mahmoud Abbas as the elected president of the Palestinian Authority. He's genuine, he is sincere, and we hope that he will have the power to be able to meet the requirements necessary for negotiations between us and the Palestinians.
How soon it will be? The sooner, the better. I don't want to prejudge it at this point. I think it's too early. And I didn't come with a time table to meet with the president of the United States, who shares our observations. I entirely agree with the vision of the president as it was outlined so vividly in the famous speech in June of 2002, which really set the course for all the developments that took place in the Middle East since then and created the possibility for, ultimately, the disengagement, which was a turning point in the history of the Middle East. And we are grateful to the president for the courage that he manifested then in presenting this outline and in being the first to support the disengagement and carry on in spite of the difficulties and the skepticism and the question marks posed by different countries at the beginning.
Most of them joined in later.
So we are anxious to have negotiations. We will look and find every possible avenue to help establish a process of negotiations on the basis of these conditions. However, as I said, we will not wait indefinitely. If we will reach the conclusion that in spite of all these efforts it is impossible to implement the principles of the road map through a negotiating process, we'll look for other ways to implement these principles, and to ultimately create a situation where there are secured borders for the state of Israel with the population centers in the territories as part of the state of Israel, and with a contiguous territory that will allow the Palestinians to establish their own Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. And hopefully this is something that will happen within the next three to four years.
Again, I am grateful to the president for the efforts that he was making and for his willingness to examine together with me these new ideas -- as he called them, bold ideas -- in the event that all other options will not be possible.
Thank you.
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