Silvan Shalom

We have the responsibility to protect our people and that's why we're building this fence. We've suffered from 19,000 terrorist attacks during the last three years.

It's not a democracy here, it's the Middle East.

We would like to ease the life of the Palestinians. I prepared a new plan that we call a positive agenda.

No one can compare us to the apartheid regime. It's not like in South Africa between the blacks and the whites who belong to the same nation, or in Berlin where you find parents living on the eastern side and their children in the western side.

Suicide bombers caused us more than 50 percent of our casualties. The fence works. There is a decline in the number of those terrorist attacks against Israelis.

In my view, Arafat is the only Palestinian in the world that isn't willing to have an independent Palestinian state.

Most of the international community, most of the countries around the world, don't want any side, any party to take unilateral steps. They would like that all of us to stick to the road map.

In 1988, King Hussein of Jordan said that it doesn't take any connection any more to those territories, and he would like to split from those territories. So according to the international law, it doesn't belong to anyone.

The security fence is reversible. Human lives are irreversible.

Cease-fire is important, but it can last only for a very, very, very short time.