Following are excerpts from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting today:

"Israel aspires to complete peace agreements with all of its neighbors.  We did this with Egypt and Jordan, and we aspire to achieve similar agreements with both the Palestinians and Syria.  Two principles dictate our approach to peace negotiations with our neighbors:

First, we will conduct negotiations without preconditions.  We do not accept the idea that Israel must always make extraordinary concessions in advance while the other side is exempt from making its own concessions.  It is negotiations that will bring about an agreement and we will not enter into negotiations when everything is known in advance.

Second, at the end of the negotiations we need to maintain the State of Israel's vital national interests, especially security.  It is doubtful whether any peace agreement that is unaccompanied by solid security arrangements on the ground can last.  We want peace that will last for years, decades and generations and to this end, these components, especially security, are essential.

I hope that we are before the resumption of the negotiations with the Palestinians.  We are open to the resumption of the process with the Syrians.  While involvement in the negotiations is important for us, it is less important than the two abovementioned principles, in both the Palestinian and the Syrian arenas.

Today, the Cabinet will establish a directors-general committee chaired by National Economic Council Chairman Prof. Eugene Kandel to formulate a national plan to reduce dependence on petroleum.  This is one of the State of Israel's vital interests.  In my opinion, this is an international interest regarding air pollution, the instability of the international system as a result of the transfer of great sums of capital from certain countries, and – of course – the fact that certain countries which control the petroleum market also support terrorism.  This interest is worldwide and the effort that we are making, in addition to the establishment of a scientific and academic team, is due to be supported by other countries.  I spoke about this with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and others.  They showed great interest in cooperating with our effort.  While this effort will not bear fruit within a year or two, within a decade there will certainly be breakthroughs that could change and dramatically reduce the world's dependence, especially regarding the use of petroleum for transportation.  While there are many alternative energy solutions outside transportation, the world is very strongly dependent on petroleum due to the dependence of transportation on petroleum.  Therefore, the focus of our diplomatic and organizational effort will be to find alternatives to petroleum in transportation."

Prime Minister Netanyahu noted that the Cabinet would be briefed on the plan to establish Israel's fifth medical school, in Safed, and added that this would – inter alia – boost regional development in the Galilee.

Prime Minister Netanyahu also said that the Cabinet would decide to allocate NIS 30 million to support focused immigration plans from the US and France.