Charlie Rose: We begin this evening with the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. He is in New York attending the United Nations General Assembly meeting. I spoke with him yesterday at his hotel about his perspective on the Middle East.
Today, he addressed the United Nations General Assembly. Here is
some of what he said.
[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
PM Netanyahu: I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II after the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the reoccurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that mission; nothing has impeded it more than the systematic assault on the truth.
Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.
I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of many of these advances – in science and technology, in medicine and biology, in agriculture and water, in energy and the environment. These innovations in my country and many of your countries offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.
But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom, they will prevail only after a horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind.
This is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fundamentalism and the weapons of mass destruction. The most urgent challenge facing this body today is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Are the members of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?
Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and then gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the sidewalks on the street choking in their own blood?
Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsor and practitioner of terrorism?
Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?
The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do thousands of people who have been protesting and demonstrating outside this hall all of this week. Will the United Nations stand by their side?
Well, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging.
[END VIDEO CLIP]
Charlie Rose: And here is the conversation that I had with the Prime Minister yesterday at his hotel here in New York.
First of all, Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for taking this time to see us.
PM Netanyahu: It’s good to see you Charlie. It’s been a long time.
Charlie Rose: It has.
PM Netanyahu: We don’t want to say how long.
Charlie Rose: Let me just touch on that. You’ve been out of power. Do you see Israeli issues, Israeli-Palestinian issues, Israeli-Arab issues different having spent 10 years away?
PM Netanyahu: Sure. I see everything differently. How? Well, you get older, grayer, probably, I’d like to think, wiser. And you think about what it is that you can do to make a lasting impact, a difference.
And you know it takes at least two to tango in this particular dance, but if we see a Palestinian leadership that is as committed to peace as the late Anwar Sadat of Egypt or the late King Hussein of Jordan were, then they will see in me as committed an Israeli leader for peace as were the late Menachem Begin and the late Yitzhak Rabin.
We’re waiting for a real peace partner.
Charlie Rose: Waiting to do what?
PM Netanyahu: Make peace. And peace means that you have to have a basic reciprocity. And the question is really, what is the basic problem? People think it’s settlements, it’s territories. Yes, these are all problems that have to be resolved.
But remember, this battle against Zionism and then the state of Israel raged for 50 years until you had the first settlement. And the question is -- from the 1920’s right up to ‘67. And we left all of Lebanon. We left every square inch of Gaza, and still they fire rockets into what they say is occupied Palestine: Beersheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Haifa, and so on, from the north and from the south.
So I asked the Palestinians a very simple question. Suppose we solve these problems: settlements, borders, territories. Will you then -- every one of these problems, I want to know a simple question, will you recognize the state of Israel [as the Jewish State]? Jerusalem had been divided and they conducted a war against us for 50 years.
Will you recognize the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people? You ask me and my people to recognize the Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people. Will you recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people? And the answer ought to be very simple -- yes.
Charlie Rose: But you know the reason they don’t do that.
PM Netanyahu: Why do you think they don’t do that, if I can switch roles for a moment?
Charlie Rose: I would think demographics and who you would define as eligible to vote and things like that.
PM Netanyahu: I think it’s not that reason. I think that the Palestinian society is not forgiving. On the one side are Hamas and the other extreme groups that openly say we want to destroy the state of Israel, and they fire thousands of rockets into our territory and make no bones about it.
On the other side is the more moderate faction. And they say, well, we’re not espousing terror, we’re doing other things. But they don’t really say it’s over. They don’t say, well, we’ll get the state and we’ll cease the conflict, cease all claims against Israel, we make a permanent peace with the Jewish State. Because for many of them, there is a subtext, and the subtext is we get a state not to end the conflict but to perpetuate the conflict for better terms. And then we ask to flood Israel with the refugees and their offspring and that nullifies Israel as a Jewish state. Or we have to make irredentist claims on the Negev and the Galilee.
And I say, look, I want to join this issue. I want to join this issue because this is where the guts, the soul of the Israeli people is. Everybody wants to make peace. There is a desire, a hunger for peace that is fantastic. But the same...
Charlie Rose: That is the will of the Israeli people and that is the will of the Palestinian people?
PM Netanyahu: You know what you have in Israel? I think this is an interesting statistic -- 70 to 80 percent of the Israelis will say we’re willing to make concessions for a genuine peace, and about the same 80 percent say but there’s no one to make the concessions to. Because they want an answer, they want to know that the Palestinian side will cease the conflict once we have a peace agreement, that the state will not be a springboard for future attacks.
So when I put forward this question of recognizing a Jewish State, not in the religious sense, obviously, as it’s a nation state of the Jewish people, and there are non-Jews there. The Arabs, Arab-Israelis are citizens like everyone else. They vote in the Knesset, they participate in the government and so on. They have equal rights. It’s not a question.
But the refugees, the Palestinian refugees go to the Palestinian state, just as the Jewish refugees from Arab lands went to Israel. And there are no more claims. And I think this is a substantive point. This is the heart of the conflict – that this conflict has been perpetuated for so many decades because of a persistent refusal to recognize the Jewish state in any boundaries.
And that’s why I put this front and forth. And I made a speech, and it wasn’t easy for me. And I said we’ll recognize a Palestinian state, but we asked that the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state, which ought to be a fairly simple exercise. And I think that’s what they’re grappling with.
Charlie Rose: What do you think their problem with the words "Jewish state" is?
PM Netanyahu: I think it means the end of any claims, irredentist claims on Israel, on the Negev or on the Galilee where you have a sizeable Arab minority.
I think it also means that there won’t be this influx of refugees, Palestinian refugees and their descendents into Israel, because if either one of them happens, Israel as a Jewish state ceases to exist. And I think it ought to be simple to say a hundred years after, more than a hundred years after Herzl published his great manifesto, "The Jewish State," and after President Obama today -- yesterday, I suppose it would be in your time -- said we need to recognize the Jewish state. We recognize the Jewish state.
It ought to be a fairly simple exercise from the Palestinian moderates, not Hamas, to say that.
Charlie Rose: Was that language you urged the president to use?
PM Netanyahu: I’ve been speaking about it for a time. But it’s not the president of the United States who has to be urged. It’s the president of the Palestinian Authority.
And I think Mr. Abbas has to decide is he an Arafat or a King Hussein or an Anwar Sadat? Is he on the side of these last two great leaders who stood up and said it’s over? Or is he wobbling?
Charlie Rose: Fair enough. And what do you have to decide? What kind of leader are you?
PM Netanyahu: Well that will be tested.
Charlie Rose: Are you a Menachem Begin who is willing to do what he had done with Anwar Sadat?
PM Netanyahu: Any time.
Charlie Rose: Ariel Sharon, who was willing to withdraw from settlements?
PM Netanyahu: Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew.
Charlie Rose: Exactly.
PM Netanyahu: I don’t think that’s a good idea.
Charlie Rose: Because it ought to be negotiated, because you ought
to get something from it?
PM Netanyahu: Because you want a stable peace on the other side of the fence. You don’t want another "Hamastan," another Iranian base on the territory that you vacate.
So there are really two conditions for peace -- not for starting peace negotiations - I place no preconditions on it. But I think there are real clear terms for successful resolution of the negotiations once started, one is recognition. The Palestinians have to recognize the Jewish state just as we’re asked and are prepared to recognize the Palestinian state.
What kind of a leader am I? I’m the one, the Likud leader who stood before his own people, his own party, and said that just a few months ago.
Charlie Rose: I know, but...
PM Netanyahu: And second, it has to be a demilitarized Palestinian state. It can’t be a platform for additional -- for thousands of rockets that are then rained on our heads. And signing a piece of paper by itself doesn’t guarantee that. It has to be solid, solid, security...
Charlie Rose: And Israel has to control the borders you said. And air space, Israel will control the air space too.
I mean, there are many Palestinians and others beyond that who say that the state you propose for them is hardly a state.
PM Netanyahu: Why is that?
Charlie Rose: Because they wouldn’t control the air space, they wouldn’t control the borders. They would not have had -- they had to be totally demilitarized.
PM Netanyahu: Of course they have to be demilitarized. I mean, would you -- I mean, Israel is tiny. You know how tiny it is?
Charlie Rose: Yes, but Israel is strong both in terms of it’s military and in terms of its ideal.
PM Netanyahu: Charlie, I agree.
Charlie Rose: And Yitzhak Rabin once said to me...
PM Netanyahu: I agree we’re strong.
Charlie Rose: Exactly.
PM Netanyahu: Yes, but we can move from great strength to extreme vulnerability in a heartbeat. And this is our problem, you know what, because we’re so small.
Now if you’re a small country like Monaco...
Charlie Rose: This distance from there to you is...
PM Netanyahu: No. Just take a country like Belgium or Luxembourg, or Monaco. They’re small. That doesn’t make them insecure. But if they’re surrounded by neighbors who not only call for their destruction but rain, throw 12,000 rockets into that tiny country, you’d think we have real problem.
Now these rockets that land, think about that -- 10,000, 12,000 rockets falling on the United States that is compressed to the size of New Jersey. That would make you think...
Charlie Rose: And no leader would want that to happen, and no leader will stand by while that was happening. None.
On the other hand...
PM Netanyahu: What would guarantee that?
Charlie Rose: Well that’s an interesting question. How do you define your security and how you get to the place where you are more secure in your strength than you are even today? And that is helping to see a strong Palestinian entity. And you agree with that.
PM Netanyahu: Yes, I do.
Charlie Rose: You agree with that and you’re trying do something about that.
PM Netanyahu: Not only are we doing it. I think that involves a third leg. I mean, peace stands on three legs. One is recognition, which is really another word for legitimacy.
Charlie Rose: But the Arab nations are all prepared, all are -- you talk about the Palestinians, but Arab nations are prepared to recognize you and you know that from the Arab initiative.
PM Netanyahu: President Obama said something quite significant
today.
Charlie Rose: What’d he say?
PM Netanyahu: He said, and I think he was alluding to this. This is my interpretation, but I think it’s a fairly accurate one. He said to the Arab world, you know, it’s time to speak out in the open, what you say privately.
We have a common threat -- Iran. And we have a common desire -- peace. You can’t just whisper it in the corridors, you know, quietly. You have to come out and act on it and normalize the relations with Israel.
So number one, legitimacy. Number two, security. Number three, and this is what you are asking, prosperity. I think it makes a tremendous difference if young Palestinians have jobs, careers...
Charlie Rose: Hope.
PM Netanyahu: Hope. As you drive on the road from Tel Aviv -- we have two roads, one closer to the Palestinian areas. You drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. On your right Jerusalem, on your left you see Ramalah. And if you see sprouting from the ground - not rockets but gleaming apartment buildings and office blocks –that has a tremendous -- makes a tremendous difference for Palestinians, and, Charlie, it makes a tremendous difference to Israelis, because they believe something else is possible. So for the last six months, even though we had no talks, and unilaterally, it’s my decision, we have removed...
Charlie Rose: For the last six months of no talks, and...
PM Netanyahu: We’ve removed hundreds -- unilaterally, hundreds of road blocks, earth ramps, check points. We had 147 check points. We reduced it to 14. They work around the clock so we don’t impede.
I went to the Jordan River Bridge, the Allenby Bridge connecting the West Bank to the rest of the Arab world, and I said we’ll extend the time for passage on this bridge. I want goods, services, people, trucks to pass back and forth to the West Bank economy.
People said there, we can’t do it, prime minister, we don’t have the budget. I said you have the budget, just do it. We’ve extended times on the bridge. I personally chair a ministerial committee to unclog all sorts of bureaucratic hurdles to Palestinian, to investment projects in the Palestinian areas. I checked sewage, electricity. I want to know why these projects are not being moved by our side. If they have impediments on their side, that’s a different matter.
That’s what I do because I believe in this. I believe that prosperity helps peace. We used to think that peace will bring prosperity. I tend to think it maybe in some cases the other way around, that prosperity brings peace or at least creates the condition for the political process to succeed. And I think there’s something different going on in the West Bank.
Charlie Rose: You’re beginning to sound like Shimon Peres.
PM Netanyahu: Oh, what’s wrong with that?
[LAUGHTER]
He’s a very good friend, you know. We’ve known each other a long time. I think...
Charlie Rose: But that’s a central idea that he articulated for a long time.
But here is another question about the politics. How much freedom do you have? You talk about saying you want a budget, you got a budget, you need people to do this, we’re going to withdraw. I’m the Prime Minister, I’m willing to take this chance.
But others worry about this coalition you have. And they worry about how much maneuverability you have to do the things that you may very well want to because you had to put together people who might have a different idea about Israel’s security, Israel’s destiny, and the way to get there. And also about the plight of Palestinians.
PM Netanyahu: I think there’s actually a much bigger consensus in Israel, which I tried to express in a speech I gave at Bar-Ilan University, and I was amazed at the response, amazed.
Charlie Rose: Amazing in what way because of what you said?
PM Netanyahu: Because I said that what we really need is -- that peace with the Palestinians would consist of a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes a Jewish state. That’s in a nutshell what I said.
The response was overwhelming. I mean this cut across -- it skipped the center. It cut across the right and the left. I’m not talking about the extreme fringes who will never be satisfied. I think this expresses the yearning for peace and also the basic two conditions of recognition and security that Israelis would coalesce around. And Israelis are very generous people, if they believe there’s a Sadat on the other side, a King Hussein on the other side. And I hope that we’ll encounter such leadership.
But you asked what did I learn? I learned two things. One is unity. I always said in talking about Shimon Peres, people said to me, what is the biggest mistake that you made in your first term as Prime Minister?
Charlie Rose: Good question.
PM Netanyahu: You may have asked me that. I’m not sure.
[LAUGHTER]
And I may have told you, because I believed it, I said the biggest mistake was not turning to Shimon Peres who was the leader of Labor at the time and said, let’s join hands, let’s form a government of national unity for the purpose of peace and security.
Well, I didn’t just say it, that’s exactly what I did now. I turned to Ehud Barak, who is the head of the labor party, and I said let’s join hands for the sake of peace and security.
I think if Israel is to make peace, it will make peace only from a position where the great body of people are convinced that they’ll have security and they’ll have a partner on the other side that recognizes the State of Israel.
Charlie Rose: And that includes your foreign minister? You would say the same thing to him you said to Ehud Barak?
PM Netanyahu: I say the same thing to everyone.
Charlie Rose: And does he respond in the same way that Ehud Barak does? Because there is a question as to whether there are two very different views of the destiny of Israel.
PM Netanyahu: I think they want proof. They all want proof. They’re all willing to go a great distance, but they want to be sure, because the margins of our existence are so fragile. Understand what it means to get dozens of missiles, how about thousands of missiles. They don’t just rain on our populations, on our cities. That’s bad enough. No one has been subjected to this other than Britain in World War II.
Charlie Rose: No one denies that either.
PM Netanyahu: Well, the second point is, Charlie, is if we miss out, most of the rockets, close to 95 percent of the rockets that are hurled against Israel are hurled from the adjacent territories, nearby territories. And they are hurled at our cities, which is an unbelievable problem, but they can also be hurled at our air bases, at critical installations for our defense. So if we blow it, if we make the wrong judgment...
Charlie Rose: And that will be creating a state that has the potential to do that as a state.
PM Netanyahu: That becomes an Iranian enclave. Now, here’s what happened. Sharon, whom you mentioned, and whom I greatly respect, a great leader, there’s no question about it. But Sharon decided...
Charlie Rose: A man who grew and evolved in his ideas of public policy.
PM Netanyahu: No question about it. But I disagreed with him when he unilaterally walked out of Gaza. I said, Arik, this, this will be a platform from which rockets will be fired on Ashkelon and Beersheba and Ashdod.
Charlie Rose: And you simply wanted to negotiate and create a way to prevent that from happening?
PM Netanyahu: I said that unless we had some arrangements, I said Hamas would take over. I coined the term "Hamastan." Look at what happened. We vacated this territory. Iran essentially walked in with its Hamas proxy, and they’re packing a lot of missiles. They fired rockets into Israel. We walked out of Lebanon, and Iran walked in with its Hezbollah proxy, and they fired thousands of rockets into the north of Israel. The last thing we want is to walk away from the West Bank or pieces of the West Bank and have Iran come in and place thousands more rockets on Tel Aviv.
Charlie Rose: And so the only way you can do that is to say, well, take a Palestinian state and respect it, if they’ll recognize us as a Jewish state and they’ll be demilitarized.
PM Netanyahu: Demilitarization is critical for peace, because the only peace that will endure is a peace you can defend. If you can’t defend the peace, it’s not going to hold.
Charlie Rose: First of all, I don’t understand why it took you a long time to come to the idea that a two state solution was a good idea. Why did it take you until that speech after the president spoke in Cairo to go that far, which you now point as "something that was very difficult for me and it took a certain courage for me, and it resonated with everybody"?
PM Netanyahu: It resonated the way I said it did.
Charlie Rose: Right.
PM Netanyahu: I put those basic stipulations that Israelis agree with. I have not said that I would go back to the ‘67 boundaries.
Charlie Rose: Not specifically, but some changes.
PM Netanyahu: I have not -- I want Jerusalem as a united city under Israel, and I will not accept refugees, because I think...
Charlie Rose: Are those items non-negotiable, or, like most negotiations, you state these are my principles, this is what I believe in, but let’s talk and see where we can get.
PM Netanyahu: Look, they’ll raise their positions and we’ll raise ours and we’ll differ, I guarantee you. But I think that the most important thing you asked is why did I raise it? Well, see, I’ve been talking about this for quite some time. I said, look, the Palestinians in a final settlement should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handfuls of powers that could threaten the State of Israel. I’ve been saying this for years. Yes, it takes time.
Charlie Rose: Yes, but this speech was the first time, and some say you felt like you had to respond to the fact that in Cairo the president of the United States had spoken to the region in a dramatic way.
PM Netanyahu: You didn’t sit in the inner cabinet discussions that we had well before the Cairo speech.
Charlie Rose: Not because I wouldn’t like to.
PM Netanyahu: Here’s one, I’ll tell you what I said. I don’t want to talk about others, but I said this, and I’ve said this on other occasions too. I said look, what are we going to do with the Palestinians? We don’t want them as citizens of Israel, but we don’t want them as our subjects either. So they have to govern themselves. Aside from the territorial question, which is subject obviously to negotiation, why is it that we wouldn’t want them to govern themselves? And the only answer, the real answer to that is we do want them to govern except for the problem of security.
So is it possible to conceive of arrangements where this issue is taken care of? And if you look around the world, you’ll see various ideas of sovereignty. For example economic sovereignty isn’t absolute in many places. It’s not absolute. You know that. You know there are international institutions that limit your sovereignty.
I have been reading up on this a great deal and I don’t want to bore you. First of all it has awful jargon...
Charlie Rose: I understand, but a lot of people have said that what the Palestinians would end up with under your conditions would be a far less sovereignty than any nation on earth.
PM Netanyahu: Why does Palestinian self-determination require that they have rockets and missiles and tanks and artillery to threaten us? Why? I see no reason for that, and especially given the dimensions, the proximity to our cities, the tiny dimensions - Israel is so tiny that, as I said, it can move from great strength to great vulnerability overnight. You say, yes, but you’ll have a peace agreement. A lot of peace agreements have been shredded to bits.
Charlie Rose: What I say is it’s in your best interest to build up the Palestinian state so that they can be – partake of economic prosperity. But I’m just asking questions. I have no policy.
PM Netanyahu: Well, that’s a refreshing change for some of the journalists that I have encountered.
[LAUGHTER]
Charlie Rose: All right.
On this program that prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, which a lot of people have praised because of some of the things he is saying, he said to me he wants to – even without a state, build up the Palestinian community in a way that when statehood becomes it will be anticlimactic, because they will have self-governing institutions, they will be able to -- and so Israel cannot say "We don’t have a bargaining partner." They will have already shown you that they were capable.
Do you buy into what he’s saying? Do you believe that he’s on the right track, and you believe that’s possible? And do you say to him "I’ll do everything I can to help you achieve that goal."
PM Netanyahu: I’ve been saying it to him by my actions. We have undergone a a fundamental change, a dramatic change that the president alluded today, yesterday in the speech of the U.N.
Charlie Rose: Speak of that.
PM Netanyahu: Well today. And I’ll tell you, if they build institutions of governance, and they have a prosperous economy, the Palestinians, and of course have security forces that deal with terrorism, you don’t need armies to deal with it, it’s fairly straightforward and simple.
These things are good and these things are things that we want to see happening, because in fact what happened is it didn’t happen in Gaza. We left Gaza unilaterally and overnight the Hamas kicked out the Palestinian Authority and established basically an Iranian enclave there that has been used as a terror base.
Charlie Rose: But as you know, the Palestinian Authority and Fatah have been doing better.
PM Netanyahu: Sure.
Charlie Rose: And have shown some real progress.
PM Netanyahu: Good. We encourage it and we support it.
Charlie Rose: With respect to the president, you met the president, our President Obama, before he became president. And I want to confirm this, you basically said to somebody, this could be another president of the United States. This could be the future president.
PM Netanyahu: I tell you, we had a meeting. Our first meeting was in the Washington national airport in the -- airport in Washington D.C. I had come to visit the United States and he was on the campaign trail. It was early on in the campaign.
Charlie Rose: You were a private citizen then.
PM Netanyahu: I was head of the opposition. And the only place we could meet was I think was in a sort of a custodian’s office there, or janitor’s office. He came. He was only running for the president of the United States, and he came with one person. I being the head of the great empire called Israel, I had five aides. Four of them had either been born in or spent a lot of time in the United States. We had the meeting. After the hour’s meeting, we parted. And I said I think he’s going to be the next president.
Charlie Rose: Why did you say that?
PM Netanyahu: I’ll tell you what my aides said. They said, it’s true you spent time in the United States, but you weren’t born here. And you’re wrong. But these are my aides who are otherwise experts in great things.
Charlie Rose: Except American politics.
PM Netanyahu: Why did I say that? Because I felt he had special capacities, great capacities that I thought would propel him to where he actually got.
Charlie Rose: You quoted him as saying, "I come from the left of the center, you come from the right to the center, and we’re both practical and pragmatic men."
PM Netanyahu: He said people attribute, think that we carry a lot more ideological baggage than we actually do. We have to -- at the end of the day, leaders have to come up with pragmatic solutions to complex problems. And I said I agreed with that.
Charlie Rose: Tell me -- you come from an illustrious family. You father goes back to the creation of the State of Israel.
PM Netanyahu: It goes back a hundred years. We celebrated his hundredth birthday.
Charlie Rose: Exactly, and with a very strong sense of what Israel’s destiny is.
PM Netanyahu: He just visited New York. I called him up the other day and I said how are you, dad? He said "I can’t talk to you now." That struck me as odd. He usually likes to talk to me. I said why? He said I’m packing. I said, "Where are you going?" He said "I’m going to New York City." I said "You’re what?"
Charlie Rose: And you didn’t know.
PM Netanyahu: No, I didn’t. But he left that night and came back a week later. He’s very active, he’s writing.
Charlie Rose: Coming from that, what influence did he have on you about Israel and about Israel’s destiny and about Israel’s place and about what Israel had to do to build its national security and build its institutions and build its opportunity?
PM Netanyahu: Both my parents, my mother and father, had obviously a very strong influence on me, as did my older brother. But it’s not only on me. I mean what has shaped all of us is the great experience of the Jewish people in the 20th century, this transformation from utter powerlessness where we didn’t control it -- we were like a wind-tossed leaf. I was in Berlin the other day and I visited the Wannsee Villa, a suburb of Berlin where the Nazis met in January of 1942 and decided in a few hours to destroy the Jewish people.
Charlie Rose: The final solution.
PM Netanyahu: The final solution. The invitation by Heydrich, Himmler’s deputy and the head of the SS, reads, "You are cordially invited to a discussion of the final solution of the Jewish people, you know, after breakfast." They say breakfast will be served. And they ate breakfast, a hearty breakfast, and then they discussed this for several hours. Nobody batted an eyelash. They drank cognac and they decided to exterminate the Jewish people, my people, and they did. That was our condition.
And the State of Israel was established to change that condition so that we can govern our destiny, so that we may still have anti-Semitism and the raging fires of hatred, of hatred of the Jewish people raging around us, but for the first time in many, many centuries, the Jews would have the power to defend themselves, defend themselves in the forum of the United Nations, that is against the moral attacks, which I will do tomorrow, and defend themselves physically.
And yes, that was impressed on me by my parents, but, believe me, it was impressed on every Jew in Israel by their parents and their grandparents and the collective experience of changing the fate of the Jewish people.
That is a profound transformation which I’m deeply aware of, that we live in a privileged generation where the Jews can once again decide the Jewish fate. This has not been available for us for close to 2,000 years.
Charlie Rose: So what is the destiny of Israel, your father believed, your brother believed and you believe? What is that destiny?
PM Netanyahu: It’s to gather the exiles in the Jewish homeland and to have a vibrant, progressive, and advanced Jewish state that is a beacon to mankind in so many areas, in medicine and technology and everything else, that we’re forging new paths to and living in peace with our Palestinian neighbors.
You asked me, why is this so hard? Why is it hard for me? Do you know why?
Charlie Rose: Why?
PM Netanyahu: Because of the deep attachment that we have to this land. This is our homeland. It’s not a foreign land.
Charlie Rose: But they don’t view it that way either.
PM Netanyahu: I understand that. But understand that I recognize that a million-and-a-half Palestinians live in the heart of the heartland of my homeland. And we have to come to a solution with them, a practical solution that they can live in dignity as a free people and that we can do the same.
The land on which they live is not a strange, colonial, faraway place. I mean, I have a way to express that to people. They come into my office, the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, and I say, look, here’s a photograph, an enlarged photograph of a seal, a ring, that was found next to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and its 2,700 years old. It has a name of the official on it. It’s in ancient Hebrew. I can read it. That name is Netanyahu. Netanyahu, Ben Yoash, Netanyahu, the son of Yoash. My first name Benjamin goes back earlier. It’s about 3,500 years old. You know the story about Benjamin in the bible. They walked on these same hills. These hills are where the prophets of Israel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, David, the kings of Israel, David, Solomon. This is not a strange land. So, on the one hand our attachment to this land is extremely deep, probably deeper than you can find -- well, as deep as any nation that exists.
Charlie Rose: Can you imagine that the Palestinians feel the same way, that they feel the same depth of passion and commitment to land, security, and a place too?
PM Netanyahu: Because of that -- you asked me why it is hard. It’s hard. So the question is, how do you balance our ancestral attachment to this land? After all, we came back, you know, out of -- we’ve done something no people have ever done, broken the laws of history. You come back -- Toynbee said that this couldn’t happen, the Jews are a fossilized nation, and they can’t come back to life and it will never happen. Well we’re here. Toynbee is on the shelves, but we’re here, alive and kicking. And the main thing right now is we want to establish this peace with the Palestinians that have their own desires and their own aspirations.
Charlie Rose: Because...
PM Netanyahu: But there has to be a compromise here. And while we’re ready for compromise, and I think the Israelis, you know the Zionists and Israel have shown repeated willingness to compromise. From the 1920s though the partition plan of 1948 which divided the state into a Jewish -- the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state, we were ready to do that. We gave back the Sinai, we got out of Gaza. I made an arrangement in Hebron. We had the Wye River Agreement. We have shown a consistent willingness to compromise even though it’s very painful for us to do it.
And I’m asking now for the Palestinians to come and say, we’re going to compromise too. Yes, Israel, the Jewish state will live here in this land forever. It’s not going to disappear; it’s not going to dissolve. We’re not going to find a way to get rid of it and cleverly drive the Jews to the sea by demography or any other means.
Can thay say that because we have consistently shown that willingness? And I want them to show it. Arafat didn’t. Will Abbas do it? Let’s find out.
Charlie Rose: You don’t know whether Abbas will do that or not, is that what you’re saying?
PM Netanyahu: I think the same kind of -- I think the international community in many ways has pampered the Palestinians because it has not put that question to them.
Charlie Rose: And the question it has not put to them is, are you prepared to recognize...
PM Netanyahu: The Jewish State, Israel as the nation state of the Jews.
Charlie Rose: Correct me if I’m wrong. You weren’t talking about this 10 years ago were you, the Jewish state and the idea of recognizing a Jewish State?
PM Netanyahu: No. I think, because the more I thought about it, I said what is the problem here? Everybody focuses on the question of the territories taken by Israel in 1967. But that’s the result of the Arab aggression against us. It’s not its cause. And what has happened is a subtle transformation that the results of these attacks against Israel have been turned into their cause. Yet every time we vacate a territory, as in Gaza or elsewhere, the war continues against us with a promise to liberate Israel, "liberate Palestine," which is construed as Israel in any place and any size and any boundary. And I thought we should get to the heart of this issue. Ask the Palestinians this simple question, force them to confront their own -- it’s not aspirations. It’s a fantasy that somehow Israel will disappear, it will shrivel and dissolve and disappear.
Charlie Rose: I don’t think that is the desire of most Palestinians. Yes, there are elements in the population -- there are also elements in your community who believe that in an idea of a greater Israel in which there is no respect for Palestinians.
PM Netanyahu: That’s right.
Charlie Rose: There are extreme thoughts in the Palestinian side and the Israeli side.
PM Netanyahu: But the question is what does the government do, what does the leadership do? And I take your point. Maybe the right thing to say is not that the Palestinian society is bifurcated. Maybe it is broken into three. One side obviously won’t recognize the state of Israel and will work to destroy it. The other side says we will recognize the Jewish state of Israel and live peacefully. And then there’s the sort of middle ground, and the middle ground encompasses not all but some of the political leadership. And they have to be asked to do what the world has been asking us and me to do. Confront this question head on and say is it going to be over. Will the establishment of a Palestinian state, a demilitarized state, will it be the last demand? Will you make a permanent peace? Will you cease to make demands on other parts of Israel or on the Arab citizens of Israel becoming whatever, a separate state and so on?
Many in Israel feel -- have questions about it. If you want to know what Israelis think, an overwhelming majority of them, they say that when they talk about a two state solution, they mean one state is Palestine, that’s for the Palestinians, no Jews are allowed in it. It’s sort of Jew-free. You can’t conceive the Palestinians having Jews living among them. They have to be cleansed. There has to be ethnic cleansing. And then you have the other state which is a mixed state of Jews and Arabs, but the Arabs are going to be increased because Palestinian refugees will be sweeping into the country according to the so-called right of return. Plus there will be demands, irredentist demands on the shrunken and shriveled Israel. And I say no.
In other words they say -- what do they say? They say it’s two states, but not two peoples. One is fully for the Palestinians and the other is split but eventually will be taken over demographically by the Palestinians. And, you know, sometimes you have to call it like it is and say that’s not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen. We want a real peace, a permanent peace, a defensible peace but a peace above all in which the Palestinian leadership, not me, the Palestinian leadership say to their own people, that is not going to happen. That middle ground has to disappear. That middle ground has to be taken up by courageous leaders to do what Sadat did vis-a-vis the Egyptian people, what the late King Hussein did with the people of Jordan, there has to be that kind of leadership on the Palestinian side. And I’m glad I have had the opportunity to bring this issue as I’m bringing it up now, but to bring it into the peace process, because I think that’s the essence of peace.
Charlie Rose: And you’re prepared to walk the last mile?
PM Netanyahu: That’s a curious way to put it.
Charlie Rose: Why?
PM Netanyahu: Well, it has the idea that ...
Charlie Rose: Of death?
PM Netanyahu: No, it has the idea of miles.
Charlie Rose: Of a roadmap perhaps.
Let me just stay with this idea, because I think we’re onto something important, which is where is the struggle you have in your own being. On the one hand, you don’t want to take chances because you don’t believe there will be reciprocity. I mean, we’re living here with this issue and this problem and this conflict that has been with us because people are afraid to take a chance for a better place because they don’t trust the other guy. My question -- how do you get past that kind of mistrust? That’s what political leaders are about. That’s what Yitzhak Rabin was about, and he paid a terrible price.
PM Netanyahu: Without a doubt.
Charlie Rose: But that’s what he was about.
PM Netanyahu: I think it’s a little more complicated than that, and I’ll tell you why, because I think that Immanuel Kant was right, the great German philosopher, because he said that the most critical observation that leaders have to make is that there are two kinds of peace in the world. There’s peace with democracies and peace with dictatorships.
He said that peace with democracies is automatic because most people don’t want their sons and daughters to die on battlefields. So if they have anything to do with it, their government won’t go to wars and certainly will not initiate wars. But he said that dictatorships don’t have that limitation. So the only way that you’re going to stop a dictatorship from going to war, he said, is to have the external force of deterrence or this force to roll back aggression if deterrence fails. The greatest catastrophes in history, the greatest tragedy in the history of my people and the history of the world, occurred when leaders of democracies failed to distinguish what kind of peace they could have.
Charlie Rose: What kind of peace was achievable?
PM Netanyahu: Well, they practiced the peace of democracies, which is compromise, and where defense doesn’t count, opposite the greatest dictatorship of all times, Nazi Germany, and the result was catastrophe. Opposite the Soviet Union, they learned a lesson and they practiced the peace of deterrence.
Now the question is what kind of entity do we have on the other side of the fence? If we get a dictatorship type like the Iranian-sponsored dictatorship of Hamas...
Charlie Rose: You’re surrounded by dictatorships.
PM Netanyahu: Well, authoritarian governments.
Charlie Rose: You’re surrounded by them.
PM Netanyahu: Authoritarian governments. But we have arrangements, authoritarian governments...
Charlie Rose: And you are at peace with them.
PM Netanyahu: And some of them have very courageous leaders. But we have to -- nonetheless, we have security arrangements with those regimes. And the question is what if we make a peace and vacate territory to the Palestinians, and all of a sudden we wake up the next day and we find Iran’s henchmen there? That’s exactly what happened to us – not theoretically. It just happened in Gaza. And we’ve had rockets falling on our heads as a result of that. So when you say the Palestinians are building a civil society, they’re building institutions of governance, thy’re building an economy, which we are supporting...
Charlie Rose: You’re saying that’s the same thing.
PM Netanyahu: I’m saying that’s very important, because it will decide what kind of peace we can have. But in the long run, in the foreseeable future, Israel will need to have or must have the ability to defend itself because of the possibility of change, undesirable change, and the territories adjacent to us.
Do you know what it means adjacent to us – we’re sitting in the heart of New York City? Skip JFK Airport. At LaGuardia Airport you already have the other side of Israel. So it’s a tiny country. And so we have to make sure that on the other side…
Charlie Rose: And that’s the burden you live with, but also you live with that burden, but you also live with the burden of history. And that cuts both ways, is that you have an opportunity to take risks that may possibly create a Palestinian state that’s able to live and remove the fear that Israeli citizens have lived with since ‘48.
You have that possibility.
PM Netanyahu: Well Charlie, let me tell you, it’s my fondest dream and I think it requires, it will require a courageous partner on the Palestinian’s side as well. And it will require staying the hand of Iran that is, using every power available to it to undermine the peace and to advance terror not only from a distance but up close.
Charlie Rose: And they say it publicly too. This is not something they’re saying in private.
PM Netanyahu: That’s true.
Charlie Rose: So how long is your window before nuclear weapons are within reach and you have to say we’ve given you, the United States, and we’ve asked you to find through negotiation or sanctions or something else a means of stopping Iran from having that?
PM Netanyahu: I don’t think you can direct that question only to me, because I think Iran poses certainly a great danger to Israel, Charlie, but it represents an enormous danger to the Middle East and to the world. This is the premier sponsor of terrorists.
Charlie Rose: There is no state that I have talked to in the region that wants to see Iran have nuclear weapons, none.
PM Netanyahu: Exactly.
Charlie Rose: Why did you go to Russia?
PM Netanyahu: I don’t confirm press rumors.
Charlie Rose: Do you think the Russians are going to help you on this?
PM Netanyahu: Well, I’ve spoken about this issue with all world leaders, and I think that it’s important that everyone understand that Iran with nuclear weapons is a danger to us all. Can you imagine, can you imagine Iran that supplies terrorists with rockets and many other things? It would give them a nuclear umbrella or worse. Or worse, actually gave them access to nuclear weapons.
Charlie Rose: The Iranian government is at a weaker point than it was before the election, correct? What opportunity does that offer?
PM Netanyahu: I think this regime is a lot weaker than people think. Overwhelmingly the Iranian people have shown remarkable courage. They tested. They stood up for freedom with truly inspirational courage. If you have pressures, significant economic pressures on this regime, particularly the importation of gasoline, this could make the regime, might force the regime to choose whether it wants to advance the nuclear program or risk its own viability. It’s not been put to that test.
And I think there’s a saying by Hillel the Elder, one of the great sages in Jewish history, who said 2,000 years ago, "If not now, when?" So I say, echoing Hillel, if not now, when are you going to apply those crippling sanctions? The time to do that is now. And I don’t believe that the Iranian people will coalesce around a regime that it detests. I think the opposite will happen. I think they’ll applaud this pressure, because they want to be relieved from this medieval regime, this violent theocracy that is oppressing them and threatening everyone else. I think you know from your visits in the region that every, just about every Arab leader will applaud. And so many, so many others around...
Charlie Rose: Will applaud what?
PM Netanyahu: Will applaud the effective imposition of sanctions on Iran. And I think time is short and there’s a lot of work to do.
Charlie Rose: Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very much for taking time for this conversation. It’s been a busy day for you, and I’m pleased you gave us this time.
PM Netanyahu: Thank you, Charlie.
Charlie Rose: I’d make this note. This interview was recorded on Wednesday. The Prime Minister on Thursday as we broadcast this will have delivered his speech to the United Nations, the speech that we showed you excerpts from earlier.