I'd like to ask you: what you would prefer us to do? I'd like to ask my colleagues, would any other country act differently? I think the answer is very clear. No one would act differently.

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

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

We believe that we should come to an agreement with the Palestinians. But we need two to tango.

We are not going to damage our safety and our security. We're not going to give those extremists the privilege to come so freely to Israel in order to carry out more attacks against us and kill us one day after another.

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.

We have been in the territories since 1967. In 2002, we had sometimes three or four suicide attacks every day. We came to the conclusion that it can't continue like that.