As reported in Arutz 7, opposition leader says his words have been deliberately distorted to silence the majority opinion in Israel.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Knesset plenum during a special session in memory of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin Monday.
"Year after year there are those who use Rabin's assassination to attack my camp and him. For 26 years I heard it in ceremonies and gritted my teeth but fulfilled my duty as prime minister. When I came they asked why I came and when I did not come they asked why I did not come. There are opposition leaders here who have boycotted other days of remembrance and are not being talked about," Netanyahu said.
"Is Lapid talking about statehood? He refrained from supporting the Abraham Accords. I voted while in Rabin's opposition in favor of peace with Jordan," he noted.
Netanyahu added that "Rabin signed the Oslo Accords on the assumption that Arafat and the PLO would abandon their commitment to the destruction of Israel and fight terrorism uncompromisingly. This did not happen. I thought this required us not only to reconsider these agreements but also to act for what I believed in for many years: we will achieve peace with many other Arab states not through Ramallah, but through the 'bypassing the Ramallah' axis. I have always believed that if peace with Arab states depends on the consent of the Palestinians, there will never be peace. They will not come at all. So why wait, why grant them a veto and why put peace in their hands?"
He said, "The Oslo Accords have demonstrated that lasting peace cannot be achieved on the basis of hope alone - and certainly not on the basis of false hope. I have always believed that peace is made with enemies - but only with those who decide to stop being enemies. You don't make a sham peace with those who use a peace agreement to improve their positions for the continuation of the struggle against Israel.
In this context, I repeat: there is no such thing as 'victims of peace'. There are 'victims of terrorism'. Terrorism is terrorism and peace is peace."