The first priority is the Palestinian elections which will hopefully bring about a Palestinian leadership with whom we can sit down and address all the issues on our agenda,

This is an earthquake which has taken us back 50 years and will lead to an upheaval.

[Alouf Benn is the diplomatic editor of Israel’s] Ha’aretz … full diplomatic relationship with Pakistan.

lay down in black-and-white that any organisation which calls for the destruction of Israel cannot participate in elections.

The Egyptians didn’t exactly succeed in stopping the transfer of weapons,

If the Palestinians will find a new channel that they can achieve their demands, they will have no incentive to resume the negotiations with us.

One has to remember, … that until 2000 there were representations here in Israel from Morocco , Tunisia , Qatar and Oman . There is no reason that they, and other countries, will not take...

It is very, very important to stop them, and the sooner the better,

Today everything needs to be done to unite the ranks, … It’s crucial to try to keep everyone together.

In my opinion, it is a quick fix to subdue the international pressure on it. They also want more support among the Palestinian people,

The fence is moveable. We moved a fence that we had with Egypt after we signed the peace treaty with them. We moved the fence with Jordan and Lebanon.

Starting from that moment, all the responsibility will devolve onto the Egyptians and also the multinational force, which is supposed to supervise,

These elections are an internal Palestinian matter, but I have reassured the secretary today that Israel will do everything in its power to ensure their smooth running.

I don’t think its the real position of his party.

There is no taboo after this assassination, and no one of the Palestinian leaders has immunity,

I think that the time has come after we ended our withdrawal of Gaza [for Arabs] to take the initiative, take a move forward to have better relations with Israel.

[Israel’s foreign minister described the talks as a] historic meeting … We are talking about a tremendous significance, not just in regards to our relations with Pakistan, but the entire Muslim world.

If we had built this fence on the 1967 borders, it would have been a political fence. But on this route, it is a security fence.

This is a historic move because it could lead other Muslim, Arab countries to understand that this is the right time to do this and to move their ties with us from darkness to light,...

major breakthrough .

an attempt at spin.

The Palestinians are not willing to do anything, they’re not willing to make the strategic decision to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorist organizations.

If we go forward and there will be an open passage from Rafah into Egypt and vice versa, we will need supervision of a third party. We will discuss as a possibility European Union involvement...

[Killing Arafat] is not the official policy of the Israeli government, … It was never before, and we don’t speak about any killing, we didn’t speak about it before, and we don’t speak about it...

If we are invited to negotiations, it would be wrong to say no. It would be for the good of nation if we were in the government.

The security fence is reversible. Human lives are irreversible.

The iron wall … Relations are growing at a rate never seen before.

It’s easy to call for a unilateral withdrawal when you don’t consider what will happen the next day among the northern border communities.

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...

I am sure that this meeting will be followed by more meetings in the future. We hope that finally it will lead to full diplomatic relations with Pakistan as we would like it with all...

Israel will never agree to the return of Palestinian refugees to the territory of the state of Israel,

She’s coming also to try and narrow the gap between Israel and the Palestinians and to help us strengthen our relations with the Arab and Muslim world.

The Palestinians will never, never implement their commitment to dismantle their infrastructure of terrorist organizations.

We reached an agreement with the Egyptians and the Palestinians that we will wait six more months before we consider the opening of the Rafah passage for two ways,

The decision [to remove Arafat] that we took two days ago was not for immediate action, … We are taking into account our allies and our friends, and that’s the way we are working.

We made a huge breakthrough today…, … This is the appropriate time for all the Muslim and Arab countries to reconsider their relations with Israel. We think it will be a very positive signal to...

It is time to put an end to conspiracy theories against Israel,

These are optimistic times in the Middle East. The iron wall that has defined Israel’s relations with most of the Arab and Muslim world for generations is coming down,

Israel has no conflict with the Arab and Muslim world, … Just the opposite is true. We share many common interests and values. … I always believed that the Arab and Muslim world has a...

In Gaza, there are 22,000 employees paid by the Palestinian Authority, fully armed, working for the security forces of the Palestinian Authority.

[At the meeting,] we also discussed the possibility of a meeting between Prime Minister Sharon and President (Pervez) Musharraf. This has not been decided, we will know in the coming days if it will happen,...

That would be the end of the state of Israel, and I think here there is practically complete consensus among all citizens of the state.

There is no doubt our situation is better today with regard to ties with the Muslim world,

There’s no preventative measure between the Palestinians, between those terrorists to the state of Israel.

Abu Mazen has to wake up and he has to take the correct strategic decision and start collecting illegal weapons and dismantling the terror organizations,

He has failed to give us peace; he has failed to give us security,

I am sure this is best time for them and for us to move forward toward better relations, maybe full diplomatic relations,

This government will not march or walk in two tracks in the same time in parallel. I mean terror by day and negotiation by night. If these terrorist contacts will continue, I think that we...

The question is not if they are going to hold that bomb in 2009 or 2010 or 2011, the question is when they will have the full knowledge,

We believe that Iran is trying to buy time … so it can develop a nuclear bomb,