Saving lives is more important than preserving the quality of life. Quality of life is always amenable to improvement. Death is permanent.

90 percent, 85 to 90 percent of Israeli citizens in Judea-Samaria, in the West Bank, live in clusters, in urban blocks. Everybody understands that if we were to have a solution then those blocks would stay in Israel. And that's where you saw these cranes; that's where Israelis live. In the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, everybody understands, they will stay.

Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.

Every time an Arab leader truly wanted peace, they got it. If the Palestinians truly want peace, we will make peace.

We don't point a pistol at our own forehead. That is not the way to conduct negotiations.

I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: Today, we are all Americans. In grief, as in defiance.

My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin - Binyamin - the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Samaria 4,000 years ago, and there's been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.