Transcript: Interview with Benjamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Canada on Sunday for the first time since 2002, giving speeches at Toronto's Ricoh Coliseum and at a Walk with Israel event sponsored by the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto before heading to Ottawa to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday.

The following is a transcript of an interview by the CBC's Peter Mansbridge with Netanyahu on May 30.

Mansbridge: Prime Minister, welcome to Canada.

Netanyahu: Thank you. I'm absolutely delighted to be here and I mean it when I say it.

Mansbridge: There are those who say that Canada is now Israel's closest ally.

Netanyahu: It's pretty close, I have to say.

Mansbridge: Who's closer?

Netanyahu: Well, I can tell you that I won't make comparative rankings, but we feel very comfortable with Canada. We're very proud of the fact that we have an increasingly strengthening relationship in every field — people to people, technology to technology, universities to universities, government to government. Stephen Harper has been a great champion of defending Israel's basic right to defend itself, fighting the campaign to de-legitimize Israel. People take note. They take note of the friendship of the government of Canada and the people of Canada. And I've come here to express our appreciation for that and to seek ways to work together for peace.

Mansbridge: If we can talk about a number of the issues that are confronting Israel. Just the other day, Friday, the United Nations Nuclear Non-proliferation Conference suggested it wants to check, in effect regulate, Israel's nuclear capability. Do you buy that?

Netanyahu: Well, I thought that was a particularly distorted and flawed resolution because it singled out Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East and the only country anywhere on Earth threatened with annihilation. Yet it failed to mention Iran, which brazenly violates the Non-proliferation Treaty, is racing to arm itself with atomic weapons and openly expresses its wish to see Israel wiped off the face of the Earth. So they single out Israel, let Iran go. That tells you how distorted a resolution this is. And given the nature of this distortion, I don't think Israel will participate in the implementation of the resolution.

Mansbridge: I want to get to Iran in a moment. But does the world have a right to know what Israel's nuclear capabilities are beyond energy?

Netanyahu: The problem in the Middle East is not Israel. The problem of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East is centred on those tyrannical regimes, or regimes that have supported terrorists, that have signed the Non-proliferation Treaty but has brazenly violated — beginning with Saddam, that is, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, which built a nuclear plant to produce atomic bombs, Libya which was very advanced in its nuclear weapons program, and Syria. And of course, most dramatically, Iran, which basically defies the entire world. So that's where the emphasis should be on and not on Israel. Israel doesn't threaten any country with annihilation. It doesn't seek to annihilate any country.

Mansbridge: But I understand that. But there's a broader world out there and I'm wondering whether they have that right to know what your capabilities are. 

Netanyahu: Well, we're a responsible country and the important thing, I think, is that we understand that the problem of nuclear proliferation is a serious one obviously in the world, but it's not uniformly serious. It's very different if Luxembourg gets nuclear weapons — I hope I didn't make a — step on any diplomatic faux pas — or if the Ayatollah regime in Iran has nuclear weapons. The greatest threat to mankind today, and this is what we should be focusing on, is if a radical Islamic regime meets up with nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons meet up with a radical Islamic regime. The first is called Iran and the second is called the Taliban takeover of Pakistan.   These developments could be a pivot of history. They could change the world. And I think if the international community wants to be concerned with the problem of what happens if these radical regimes acquire nuclear weapons, what happens if they give them to terrorists — these weapons could appear anywhere, they don't even have to have missiles, they could be put in a container on a boat without a direct address, they could appear in any country in the world — that is the single greatest threat of our time and that's what people should be focused on.

Mansbridge: Let's focus on Iran for a moment. The Times of London has a report today that says that you're prepared to position Israeli nuclear submarines off the coast of Iran in the Gulf because of intelligence that you have — your country has — of missiles moving from Iran to Syria to Lebanon. True or not true? 

Netanyahu: Well, parts of this are completely untrue. What is true is that we are interdicting as best as we can the flow, a tremendous inflow, of weapons from Iran to their terrorist proxies, which is Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They're shipping them thousands and thousands and thousands — tens of thousands of rockets and missiles — to fire on our cities, on our children. And we have been able to interdict. For example, one celebrated interception was on the high seas. We found a ship from Iran destined to Hezbollah that had 200 tons — can you imagine, 200 tons — just in one ship, of these deadly weapons that are aimed at civilians — and we took it away. But these are the ships that we intercept. I can't (overlap) … about those that we don't intercept.

Mansbridge: But are you moving towards the Iranian coast? Because this will raise once again a number of issues: one, has talk worked against Iran? And two, the whole issue of pre-emption, still with talk. Has talk worked? I mean not just from Israel, but from Canada, the United States. Many Western countries have said similar things about Iran that you've said, especially about its president, [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. Has anything changed? We see protests on the streets of Tehran. Is that enough for you?

Netanyahu: Has anything changed? Yes. You know, we go back a while, but you might remember that when I first became prime minister the first time — that was in 1996 — I spoke before a joint session of the United States Congress. And I said that the single greatest threat facing the world is the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons. A lot of eyebrows were raised then. This was 1996. I have to say that what has happened since is that people do not raise eyebrows now. Fourteen years have passed and the leading countries of the world, and I include of course, first the United States and Canada with them, understand the danger. France understands. But there is a —  

Mansbridge: (overlap) But nothing has changed substantially with the danger has it?

Netanyahu: Well, it's getting closer because —

Mansbridge: To what?

Netanyahu: To the production of atomic weapons in Iran. That's clear that Iran —

Mansbridge: So at what point do words not matter anymore?

Netanyahu: This is a very pivotal question because I think you put your finger on it. There has been a move first to an understanding of the threat. That has happened in the international community. But there is a clear question of what do you do between understanding a problem and acting on it. It looks like the international community is going to pass sanctions in the United Nations Security Council. I think that's a symbolic action. I don't think it's going to have practical consequences for Iran. What is possible is to have much tougher sanctions that prevent Iran from importing gasoline or prevent it from exporting oil. That would have a stronger effect. Will it be enough to stop Iran's race for nuclear weapons, weapons they can give to terrorists that could threaten every one of us, including Canada? That remains to be seen. But I think what is required right now is for a decision to be made in the minds of the powerful and leading countries of the world. We will not let Iran develop nuclear weapons.

Mansbridge: Well, I mean they seem to say that all the time. But, according to you, they still are. I just want to hit the pre-emptive note for a moment. Because I don't think you've ever publicly said you're for a pre-emptive strike on Iran. However, you have talked about pre-emption in general terms. And the last — I remember well because you and I talked about this in 2003 just before the Americans went into Iraq — and let me remind you of something you said, because I think it's prescient. "A pre-emption is the most difficult decision for democracies to make because you could never prove what would happen if you don't pre-empt." Now, as it turned out, there was a pre-emptive strike. They didn't find weapons of mass destruction. Are you concerned at all that Iran doesn't have the nuclear capability that you fear it has in terms of making weaponry?

Netanyahu: Well, that pre-emption clause that you're talking about was primarily based on the experience of Britain in World War II and it couldn't get the leading countries of the world to recognize an enormous global threat in time. So I would say the first requirement of any living organism is to recognize danger in time and act on it. Otherwise you can get devoured or you can pay a terrible price —

Mansbridge: But are we at that point now?

Netanyahu:  That is true of nations too and certainly was true of the democratic world in World War II and it failed to recognize the danger in time.

Mansbridge: But are we at that point now?  It has been talk, talk, talk for longer than Britain was talking before the Second World War about the threat.

Netanyahu: Well, there is talk and there is recognition and there is the question of whether there will be sufficient action. There's some action. The question is whether there will be sufficient action and I think that's — that's a question that's left hanging in the air.

Mansbridge: Prime Minister, you wanted to make one other comment on the differences between the Iraq situation of '03 and today. 

Netanyahu: Well, I sat in the Israeli cabinet — I was foreign minister at the time — and I heard the assessments of Iraq's nuclear program. And we asked our intelligence people — this was before the American attack — do they have nuclear weapons, do they have biological weapons? And our intelligence people said, we don't know. We can't tell you yes, we can't tell you no. We don't have direct evidence. We think we might have it, but we can't prove that they have it. And if you asked us to sign off on it, we say we don't know.  That is not the situation today with Iran. We do know that they have a nuclear weapons program. They themselves, the leaders, take journalists on guided tours of centrifuge holes. They're enriching their uranium to the high degree, very close to what is required for weapons grade material. We know they're building these ballistic missiles. What is that for? They say, well it's for medical isotopes. Right. So, you know, it looks like a nuclear program, it walks like a nuclear program, it smells like a nuclear program. It's not a duck. It's a nuclear program. It's a nuclear weapons program. And that we have no doubt whatsoever.

Mansbridge: So what's the time frame? How much time have you got to stop it if it has to be stopped?

Netanyahu: It's very close. I talked about it for the first time that I discussed it, which was about 14-15 years ago. It's moved up and it's finally getting there, you know. You say wolf, wolf, wolf and finally the wolf gets very close. They're very close.

Mansbridge: Is that why you have submarines off their coast?

Netanyahu: No, we don't have submarines, certainly we don't have nuclear submarines, period. You asked me about that. We don't have those. But we have, we share, we monitor what is going on and we share with other leading countries in the world what we find and coincidentally they share with us what they find. It used to be that we used to talk about Iran's nuclear program. They said, what nuclear program? Then they said, all right they have a nuclear weapons program but it's going to take them — we disagree on how many years it will take them to develop. All of that, as Iran gets closer and closer to producing this terrorist regime, this terrorist supporting regime is getting closer and closer to getting nuclear weapons — the main countries in the world agree on the facts. They even agree on the danger. What they now have to agree on is that they are actually committed to stopping this danger from materializing.

Mansbridge: Prime Minister, I want to talk a little bit about the peace process. The other day you said you want to move to direct talks with Palestinians as opposed to the indirect talks that are kind of refereed by the Americans. Does that indicate the indirect talks have been going well or that they're not going well at all?

Netanyahu: They just began. But my point is why do we need indirect talks anyway? I mean Palestinians live right next to us. The office of the Palestinian leader, Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], the head of the Palestinian Authority, is 10 minutes from my office. Do you think we need the Americans shuffling back and forth just to pass messages between us? I think we should get into a room or a tent, you know, a peace tent, and just start talking and —  

Mansbridge: Who's we? You and Abbas, just the two of you?

Netanyahu: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Now I mean I think the help of the United States is always appreciated. It's always been there from the peace treaty with Egypt, Camp David and elsewhere. But in Camp David, Begin and Sadat sat opposite each other. I myself conducted peace talks at Wye plantation and we stood next to the Palestinian leadership directly with each other. And I think that that's what we need.  I've called for direct talks with the Palestinians from day one and they sort of back off, relying maybe on the United States supplying all sorts of theoretical pressures on Israel instead of actually getting in there locking horns — (overlap)

Mansbridge: But they set a condition on direct [talks] and that's the settlement issue.

Netanyahu: Well, they never said that condition for the 16 years that we've had peace talks with the Palestinians. They all of a sudden decide in the last year when there's been a reduction in settlement activity — and I in fact put a temporary freeze on new construction — and they, instead of embracing these gestures, they actually put on more and more and more conditions, which are making it very hard to move towards peace. So you ask me what I'd like. I'd like a direct engagement, direct talks. Sit in the room with them, raise our concerns and basically move towards my concept of peace, which is a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state of Israel. We recognize the Palestinian state as the nation state for the Palestinians; they recognize Israel as the nation state for the Jewish people. After all, we've been around here some time, only about 4,000 years. They live there too and we have to find a way to live together. We have to talk to each other.

Mansbridge: Can you be a state without the ability to defend yourself? In other words, the demilitarized state. I mean can that actually —  

Netanyahu: Yeah, of course we can. There are many examples of security arrangements, regional arrangements, international arrangements. But the thing is, I don't want to govern the Palestinians. I don't want them as either subjects of Israel or citizens of Israel. Let them have their own country (overlap) …

Mansbridge:  But aren't they still a subject if they're demilitarized? 

Netanyahu: No. Because the real problem is what happens to us if we just walk away? We walked away from Lebanon, we got an Iranian base in the north in Lebanon under Hezbollah. We've had 6,000 rockets fired from that base, Iranian base, on Israel's cities. We walked away from Gaza and Iran took that over with Hamas and we've had 6,000 additional rockets fired into Israel. Now I don't want that to happen a third time in the West Bank. I want to have an arrangement where if we make territorial concessions that this Palestinian state does not turn into a third base of Iran. Understand our problem; it's kind of hard to explain. If you reduce Canada to one-thousandth — not one per cent of its size — to about one-thousandth — one-tenth of one per cent of its size — that's Israel. I took my wife yesterday as a tourist. I went to the CN Tower, sat there, spinning around. You know, as we look into the horizon that's a lot wider than the state of Israel. I mean you can fit the state of Israel — the width of the state of Israel is much smaller than what you can see in this Greater Toronto region. So you have this tiny — imagine this tiny Canada sort of compressed into a width less than Toronto and now you build a state next to it. And that state can bring in weapons and fire 12,000 rockets into this Toronto? Would you accept it? You'd say no. I'm willing to do that providing there is a real demilitarization on the other side because there is no country that faces the kind of threats we face. So I think demilitarization is critical. Because our experience has been that without demilitarization, Iran just walks in, puts in thousands of rockets and missiles there and destroys the peace. Obviously we don't want that to happen again.

Mansbridge: I'm running out of time. A couple of quick questions. Is in your view a two-state solution inevitable?

Netanyahu: I think it's possible and it's the way to achieve this peace, if it's a demilitarized state, and if the Palestinian leadership does something it hasn't done up to now, which is to say, yes we recognize the Jewish state. We want a state of our own, a Palestinian state, but we want it not in order to continue the conflict, get rid of the Jewish state, the one and only Jewish state, Israel, but that this is the end of the conflict. Yes, Israel, we recognize the Jewish people have a right to a state of their own. We're not going to flood it with refugees. Palestinians will go to the Palestinian state. Jews can come to the Jewish state. That is the kind of solution that I'm looking for. And so far, because of the intimidating power of the radicals backed by Iran, the more moderate elements can't come and say this simple thing. I've spoken to my people this year and I said I will welcome two states for two peoples — a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people, a Jewish state, Israel, for the Jewish people. And the Palestinian state will have to be demilitarized so that — you know, it can change over time, you can test it, these demilitarization arrangements.  But this is the formula: a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state. This is the winning formula for peace. Palestinians have yet to embrace the simple idea of saying that they will recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. That's perplexing. 

Mansbridge: If they do and they agree to the demilitarized state — with the concerns that I'm sure they will express on that — but if they did that's when Israel starts making concessions on land and territory? 

Netanyahu: It think it would be a tremendous leap forward. I think if we can actually overcome these two things. By the way, I don't place these as conditions for entering the talks. I say we should talk without pre-conditions. We should not place any conditions or impediments on having this kind of discussion. 

Mansbridge: You sound pretty convinced that those are conditions when you talk about a demilitarized state. 

Netanyahu: For finishing talks. We'll have other concerns with Palestinians, but how are we going to resolve these issues unless we actually talk to one another? I mean I'm delighted to talk to you, Peter, but I think it's no less productive, a lot more productive to talk to the Palestinian leadership directly, in the same room, because this is how we reach a solution. So I don't place any pre-conditions on entering talks. I have a clear idea of how we exit the talks successfully and I'm sure the Palestinians will bring up their own issues. But this is what we need to do, get into direct talks and resolve the issues of legitimacy and security. And I would add one other thing, which we're doing anyway — we're not waiting — and that's a third pillar of peace which is prosperity. In the short time that I've been in office, I've removed hundreds of roadblocks, checkpoints, Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank, facilitating Palestinian traffic, movement of goods, people. The Palestinian economy has shot up by eight per cent a year and it would not be in a position to do so if we hadn't relieved these roadblocks. That's my vision of peace. I think an economic peace is not a substitute for a political peace but it sure makes it easier. It invests the Palestinian population, invests young people with a future and tells them, you can have a real future. There are shopping malls in the West Bank, cafes, e-businesses, a lot of things that are happening. It's exciting. It's the first time that it's happened.  I'd like to see highrises sprout from the West Bank and not missiles and that's my vision of peace. And I think that this is something that can unite all of Israel and all the world with the help of Canada. Canada has been a tremendous friend. I appreciate Prime Minister Harper's desire to help in the peace process. I appreciate the straightforward way that he stands up for Israel when it's slandered and I look forward to talking to him about advancing peace with security and prosperity in our region.

Mansbridge: All right, we're out of time. But help me with just one question. It's the role of much of the Western media in covering this story, because it's often criticized harshly that it's anti-Israel or anti-Semitic in its description of what is happening. Whenever I've been to Israel I watch an Israeli press that isn't shy about taking on its government and you know that well.

Netanyahu: Never encountered that.

Mansbridge: (chuckle) Is the Western media biased against Israel?

Netanyahu: Some of it is; some of it isn't. But a lot of it is missing another story. The main story is no country is as tiny, so tiny, just a speck of dust compared to Canada, facing threats that no other country faces, having a history of the Jewish people not being able to defend themselves and being obliterated basically for six years without anybody lifting a finger — that's the Holocaust. Israel was born to change that and it is changing that. And people forget that, forget what we're facing. 

Mansbridge: But is challenging an Israeli position, is that anti-Semitic?

Netanyahu: No. I don't think so. I never thought that. I engage in the positions and I like to engage in the actual argumentation but it has to be a fair presentation of what is happening. People forget that Israel has been pummelled with thousands of rockets. People forget that Israel withdrew from territories for the sake of peace and those territories in Lebanon and Gaza were overtaken by Iran and its terrorist proxies. We have a right to make sure that that doesn't happen again. But there's another —

Mansbridge: But the reporting of what Israel has done in retaliation to that or in conflict and when we see international reports, the challenge how Israel has conducted —

Netanyahu: Well, they take the last reel of the movie without showing the whole reel. They don't show the pummelling of Israel cities and they don't show the effort we take to try to target the terrorists themselves. What the Hamas terrorists are doing, with Iran's support, is that they fire at our civilians by hiding deliberately behind their own civilians and we try to ferret them out. But obviously this tactic of hiding among civilians and then firing rockets, thousands of rockets against our cities, against our children, they do it deliberately because they know that the only way we can stop them is actually going after them. But you know how we do that? We make thousands and thousands of cellphone [calls] to the Palestinian homes and say, please get out. There are terrorists in your building. Get out because we want to take them out. But we want you to leave first. We sent millions of leaflets. We send text messages. I mean the former British commander in Afghanistan, Richard Kemp, said that — Col. Richard Kemp — he said that no country in the history of warfare has taken so much effort to put civilians, the enemy civilians, out of harm's way as Israel has. And yet Israel is brought to the dock, so is that unfair? Absolutely. Is it a distortion of truth and justice? Yes. So we do stand up and defend ourselves. Let me tell you the one area where I think there has been the international press just missing out completely. We talk and it's natural, about Iran, about the peace process, about terrorism. These are big issues and they deserve to be discussed. But there is one other big issue that is happening below the radar. We've just been accepted, Israel, to the OECD as one of the developed economies of the world. Sixty-five years ago when Israel — 62 years ago when Israel was established, we had nothing — sand, swamp — nothing. Now we're one of the advanced economies in the world.   Israel produces more technological products, conceptual products per capita than any other country on Earth. There's an explosion of thousands of startup companies. Canada has quite a bit of that as well. The future belongs to those countries that can produce products of the mind. That's a source of wealth much greater than oil or gas or coal. It's an enormous source of wealth. It makes our lives better. We make sure that we can live longer, more healthily. We can have productive lives. We can communicate with each other instantly. Israel's technology is in the forefront of all these things — energy conservation, brain research, miniature satellites, information networks. It's a tremendous story that is happening there with this tiny country, which has more companies on the NASDAQ outside the United States than any other country — I was going to say except Canada but I was just told that we beat Canada too. But we shouldn't be beating each other. We should be co-operating with each other. This is a story of a tremendous information and innovation revolution. It's the startup nation and we'd like to join forces with Canada for the coalition of the thinking. That's where the future belongs.

Mansbridge: Prime Minister, we're going to have to leave it at that. Really appreciate your time once again.

Netanyahu: Thank you. 

Mansbridge: Thank you.