Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to have peace with the Palestinians but said Monday at the White House that sovereign security power needs to stay with Israel, since a future Palestinian state is an inevitable way to destroy Israel.
President Trump was hosting Netanyahu for a private dinner.
The October 7th massacre is a harbinger of what a Palestinian state would be, Netanyahu said.
“After October 7th, people said the Palestinians have a state, a Hamas state in Gaza and look what they did with it. They didn't build it up. They built down into bunkers, into terror tunnels after which they massacred our people, raped our women, beheaded our men, invaded our cities and our towns, our kibbutzim and did horrendous massacres, the kind of which we didn't see since World War II and the Nazis, the Holocaust. So people aren't likely to say, ‘Let's just give them another state.’ It'll be a platform to destroy Israel,” Netanyahu said. “We will work out a peace with our Palestinian neighbors, those who don't want to destroy us and we will work out a peace in which our security, the sovereign power of security, always remains in our hands.”
“Now people will say, ‘It's not a complete state, it's not a state, it's not that.’ We don't care. We vowed never again. Never again is now. It's not going to happen again,” Netanyahu continued.
During the public part of the meeting, Trump praised Netanyahu and their partnership, saying that “[W]e had tremendous success together. And I think it will only go on to be even greater success in the future.”
Netanyahu also nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. He handed Trump the letter he sent to the Nobel Peace Prize committee, adding that “[I]t’s well-deserved. You're forging peace as we speak, in one country and one region after the other.”
Regarding Iran, Trump said that “[T]hey want to meet. They want to work something out. They’re very different now than they were two weeks ago,” in reference to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure.
The operation against Iran was a “historic victory,” Netanyahu noted. It “set back the two tumors that were threatening the life of Israel – the nuclear tumor and the ballistic missile tumor.” But, tumors can grow back, Netanyahu said, adding that “[Y]ou have to constantly monitor the situation to make sure that there's no attempt to bring it back.”