I felt that we had become a society ruled by sectors, by interest groups: Whoever's connected to the Israeli government gets more.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is the biggest problem, but small problems shape the daily lives of Israelis. Unless there happens to be a war going on, the Arab-Israeli conflict is irrelevant in daily life.

When I introduced my economic plan for the first time, people had mixed views because it's the largest cut in the history of Israeli budgets. We have a big deficit caused by the fact that the former government took upon itself too many obligations.

I used to have so many opinions before I learned the facts.

When you look at the history of wars, they ultimately revolve around one claim: "My god is better than yours."

Israel is a tremendous success story. When I arrived, there were 600,000 Jews living here. Today there are close to 6 million. We have one of the world's top high-tech industries and a high standard of living. There is only one thing we haven't achieved: Making the country safer for Jews.

Me and apparently a lot of other people felt that the people who should benefit most from the country are the people who contribute the most, which is the middle class, who are drafted into the army, spend three years there and 25 years in the reserves. That is why I had enough votes to create out of nowhere the second-largest party in the country.