170,000 ROCKETS AIMED AT ISRAELI CITIES

JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.

JOEL 3:2 (WW3 OCCURS WHEN JERUSALEM IS DIVIDED)
2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people (ISRAEL) and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.(JERUSALEM)(WW3 STARTS BECAUSE JERUSALEM IS DIVIDED AND ISRAELIS UPROOTED FROM THEIR GOD GIVIN LAND BRINGS 3 DEAD BILLION IN WW3)

ISRAEL SATAN COMES AGAINST

1 CHRONICLES 21:1
1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

ISRAELS TROUBLE

JEREMIAH 30:7
7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble;(ISRAEL) but he shall be saved out of it.

DANIEL 12:1,4
1 And at that time shall Michael(ISRAELS WAR ANGEL) stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people:(ISRAEL) and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation(May 14,48) even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro,(WORLD TRAVEL,IMMIGRATION) and knowledge shall be increased.(COMPUTERS,CHIP IMPLANTS ETC)

It Feels Like We're Back to the Disengagement Days"-INN JAN 29,14

Attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir threw his hat into the ring in expressing suspicions that the new state prosecutor (state attorney) Shai Nitzan is prejudiced against residents of Judea and Samaria and their allies. Ben-Gvir told Arutz Sheva news "what we warned would happen is now happening today. There is a feeling we're back to the days of [the Disengagement from] Gush Katif."
Ben-Gvir complained that "resources and energies are directed" toward minor issues such as "three girls caught with stickers in the Old City." Critics say Nitzan played an active role in the Prosecution's decision to carry out mass arrests of demonstrators against the government's removal of Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria in the 2005 Disengagement, and to close investigations against police officers who used violence against the demonstrators.

170,000 rockets are aimed at Israel’s cities, says IDF intel head

Aviv Kochavi lists missile threat ahead of Iran nuke program; says in time, though, cyberwarfare will prove most dramatic change on battlefield

By Mitch Ginsburg January 29, 2014, 4:44 pm 0-The Times of Israel

The head of Israel’s most powerful intelligence agency depicted Wednesday a changing battlefield in which offensive cyber capabilities will, in the near future, represent the greatest shift in combat doctrine in over 1,000 years. For now, though, he said, the 170,000 rockets and missiles pointed by enemy states at Israel represented the most pressing threat, a danger he placed even above Iran’s rogue nuclear program.“Cyber, in my humble opinion, and you don’t have to agree with me, will be revealed in a not very long time as a revolution greater than the creation of gunpowder or the usage of the aerial space at the start of the past century,” said Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate. Kochavi, a former infantry officer, called the possibilities inherent in cyber warfare “nearly limitless, and that is not a metaphor.”He revealed that the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, already the largest of the army’s corps, has recently expanded further and shifted both its methodology and, more significantly, its approach. Where once, he said, a state’s intelligence service was expected to describe reality, today it must also “take part” and alter it.Like his predecessor Amos Yadlin, Kochavi, speaking at the INSS think tank’s annual conference in Tel Aviv, described a Middle East in a historic flux, producing an array of challenges and opportunities.He listed four central challenges. The first, notably listed ahead of Iran’s nuclear program, are rockets, he said. Kochavi asserted that Israel faces 170,000 rockets and missiles, and that, “for the first time in many decades, the enemy has the ability to drop considerable amounts of munitions on the cities of Israel.” In the past the threat was countered by the IAF, he said; today it is Israel’s enemies’ primary weapon and it represents an enormous intelligence challenge to counter.Kochavi, who has reportedly voiced opinions that did not dovetail with the political leadership’s interpretation of the changes in Iran, for instance highlighting the potential significance of Hassan Rouhani’s election to the presidency, steered clear of that topic in this address. He said only that the Iranian military nuclear program continues in a manner that enables Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should he decide to give the order, to sprint ahead “to one bomb or more.”

He revealed that the cyber threats facing Israel are growing “exponentially” and said that during the past year the state has faced hundreds of attacks and the intelligence community has faced dozens of attacks, “the vast majority of which were thankfully unsuccessful.”And finally, he noted the “near 360 degree” presence of Jihadist elements along Israel’s borders. A slide depicting areas under the control of militant, Salafist elements covered what looked like half of Syria and had a presence in nearly every country in the region, including Turkey, he noted. Aside from creating friction along the border regions and melting the traditional state lines, he said that the rise of sub-state groups also mean that today “90 percent of Israel’s future battlefields are in urban areas.”In the sort of wide-ranging presentation that the head of military intelligence typically gives once a year, Kochavi also focused on positive developments. The decline in the popularity and legitimacy of the radical axis of Hezbollah and Bashar Assad, alongside “the erosion” in the Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity in the Middle East, was a positive development. Additionally, he said, “the moderate Sunni states, represent a significant opportunity.”Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf states, “when you look in depth,” all share priorities that “are in confluence” with Israel’s most pressing interests.This new reality in the Middle East, he said several times, has dictated significant changes in the way Israel’s intelligence community operates. Without being overly specific, he said that intelligence had to move faster and farther out into the battlefield, so that what is known in HQ in Tel Aviv also “appears on the computers of the company commanders” in the field and at sea, and the collection of the material has to increase and grow more diverse.He repeatedly stressed the role of cyber war, both offensive and defensive, but concluded with the soldiers. “All of the good intelligence we have is because of them,” he said, showing a slide of several soldiers’ backs, hunched over computers. “They work a lot, work hard, and have extraordinary achievements.”

Netanyahu: Israel is leading West’s cyber-security fight

Hackers are killing the Internet, the prime minister says — and Israel is one of the few players that can save it

By David Shamah January 29, 2014, 3:54 pm 0-The Times of Israel

For Israel, cyber-security isn’t just about protecting information systems, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in several speeches Tuesday and Wednesday, during the course of Israel’s first-ever cyber-technology show. Cybertech 2014, the prime minister said, is also a way to build an international coalition of countries that will work together to defend “the great blessings” of Internet connectivity, and enable Israel to further develop its periphery, especially in the south. “Beersheva will not only be the cyber capital of Israel but one of the most important places in the cyber security field in the world,” Netanyahu declared at the opening of the conference Tuesday.Cybertech 2014 is the brainchild of Amir Rapoport, editor of Israel Defense magazine. According to event chairman Rami Efrati, some 5,500 people from Israel and abroad visited the show to see the latest in Israeli cyber-tech. “There are so many important things going on in cyber-security here, we wanted to gather as much of it in one place and show it off to Israelis, and to the world,” Efrati told The Times of Israel on the sidelines of the conference.Among the visitors are over 450 heads of industry and cyber-security agencies from around the world, said Efrati. Among the larger delegations was the U.S. delegation, including 50 people from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, and delegations from South Korea, Mexico, NASA. Representatives of the armies of Brazil, Mexico, Italy and the Netherlands, IT companies from Colombia, Ghana, and Nigeria, and a cyber-security team from Canada were also in attendance.In his speech opening the event, Netanyahu laid out his government’s approach to cyber-security and digital literacy. Among the facets of the policy is creation of a “digital Israel,” which entails laying out fiber optic cables throughout the country and “perhaps one of the ways of reducing social gaps, closing social gaps, canceling the whole idea of the periphery. Ultimately,” said the prime minister, “it’s the fast route of knowledge that can come to every home and give everyone an equal opportunity to partake in this future.”In addition, Netanyahu said, the government is working “to create the environment that allows our entrepreneurs and allows our technologists, our young men and women, to create the devices, the products, the systems, for this new world.” He added, Israel is “exploding with creativity. We’re like a country that would have about half a billion people in terms of our cyber capabilities.”

Israel’s precarious security situation made the country’s population very security-conscious, while the country’s “extraordinary research institutions and universities, like the Technion, the Weizmann Institute,” and especially Ben Gurion University — which will be the most actively involved in cyber-security, because of its proximity to several of the new cyber-security projects being launched — gave students in Israel the tools they needed to utilize those concepts of security in the cyber world, said Netanyahu. In addition, Israel was unique in that it had a small, tight ecosystem of entrepreneurs, many of whom knew each other from school and the army.All this, Netanyahu said, prepared Israel to take a leadership role in the world on cyber-security issues. The concept of privacy, the prime minister said, was antiquated – or at least different than it used to be. “The networks are exposed. The fact that we have networks, increasing complexity of networks, interconnectivity on networks means that anything and everything can be exposed. The Internet of everything means that everything can be violated,” said Netanyahu. “The whole idea of intellectual property – that is being fundamentally challenged. The privacy of individuals – fundamentally challenged. The sanctity of our bank accounts – fundamentally challenged. And this goes obviously into public systems: power grids, traffic nets, water systems – you name it. Everything can be violated. Everything can be opened up. Everything can be also sabotaged.”The opportunities – and the need – for leadership in cyber-security is great, and Israel could supply that leadership. “We have decided to put these resources together in a coherent way and we have structured a National Cyber Bureau,” he said. “We have created a special organization to try to mesh together these elements, obviously to afford cyber defense to our critical systems, to the country; but also to see how we can share with others our experience and our talent.”In essence, Netanyahu sees Israel as leading a coalition of countries to fight the forces that sought to ruin the “blessing of connectivity” that the Internet has brought. “The top policy makers, state and non-state, have to get together. I wouldn’t try to do this in an inclusive way so it’s the new UN of the Internet; that’s not going to work because some unprincipled elements would be in that room and they would distort this effort. I think you need a coalition of the willing, of the leading states that have prowess in this area and the leading companies, to sit down and discuss. In this I think Israel is unquestionably a leading power, disproportionate to our size for the reasons I mentioned, with great talents and great resources,” Netanyahu said.Netanyahu did not mention which countries would be included in that coalition, but in a separate discussion, Dr. Eviatar Matania, director of the National Cyber Bureau, said that Israel, the U.S., Europe, Australia, and other Western countries were fighting the same enemies, whether small groups of hackers or entire nation states. When asked about China, Matania said that all countries were welcome if they were serious about working together on cyber-security. “The enemies here are well-known, they are the enemies all of us in the West are fighting,” said Matania.

In order for international efforts to work, Israel needed to – and was willing – to part with some of its “trade secrets,” sharing them with the “coalition of the willing” to advance cyber-security for all. “This requires a decision, which I have made, to relax or reduce some of the constraints that we have traditionally put on such business. The government usually puts constraints on things that have implications for national security, but we have consciously made the decision to lower these restraints because we’re taking a gamble, if you will, on the growth of these partnerships, entailing some risks.” This risk-taking, he said, is required to get us to be able to control this cyber-security jungle, to cut it down to size.”Taking those risks would eventually benefit not only the members of this coalition by enhancing cyber-security, and it will benefit Israel as well. “Everything that I’ve just described is driving the growth of hundreds of cyber companies – hundreds of them – in Israel. About half of them didn’t exist three or four years ago, and the number is growing rapidly with major investments taking place.” In a sense, cyber-insecurity was a “growth industry” for Israel, one he wishes did not exist at all, said Netanyahu, but one he fully plans to take advantage of to advance Israel’s economy. The start-ups, as well as the large multi-nationals like IBM, Lockheed-Martin, EMC, and others, saw Israel as the best place to develop cyber-security technologies, Netanyahu said.And the greatest beneficiary would be the long-ignored Negev, which the prime minister foresees as becoming Israel’s high-tech center. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, had tried in vain to interest Israeli industry in developing the south. Ben Gurion “didn’t quite get the job done, but the dream was still there. What we’re doing now is something else. What we’re doing is turning Beersheba and the whole Negev into the cyber region of Israel and I think of the eastern hemisphere.“We have moved significant units of the Israeli Defense Forces to the south; we’re putting our national cyber command smack in the University of Beersheba,” stressed Netanyahu. “We have a railway line leading from Tel Aviv with a train station that literally you disembark on that point in the campus. So you have our security outfits, our university and an industrial park all within walking distance of 100 yards. That’s called a cyber-hub. It’s a big thing.”For Israel, taking on this leadership role is not a luxury if it wants to survive in the cyber-jungle, the prime minister said. Cyber-experts were fending off thousands of attacks an hour against government, military, and business systems. To survive these attacks, and to thrive as a nation, “We really don’t have a choice. I mean, we have to be good. To be here, we have to be very good, and in some cases we have to be the best.”

Netanyahu’s aides threaten to fire Naftali Bennett

PM demands apology from top minister who castigated idea of settlers staying in a Palestinian state and warned against ‘giving up our country’

By Haviv Rettig Gur January 29, 2014, 2:02 pm 4-The times of Israel

In what appears to be the worst crisis yet for the governing coalition, sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday threatened to fire Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett over his criticism of Netanyahu a day earlier.“Bennett was given a message that he has to apologize clearly and unequivocally or there will be a price to pay,” a source in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel.On Tuesday, Bennett delivered a speech lambasting the prime minister in the wake of a Times of Israel report according to which Netanyahu wants Jewish settlers to be given the choice of living under future Palestinian rule in the West Bank if a peace treaty is sealed.“No one will teach Netanyahu what it means to love Israel or to defend it. With all Bennett’s complaints, it’s not clear why he’s clinging to his seat in the cabinet,” the official said in an unusually sharp rebuke. “Bennett’s brazen and irresponsible behavior won’t be ignored. It does damage to the interests of [Jewish] settlement [in the West Bank].”The official then added the most direct threat Netanyahu has given a coalition partner since the current government was formed last March. “If Bennett won’t apologize, he will endanger the composition of the current government. Netanyahu has enough alternatives. Even a government without Bennett will know how to secure Israel’s citizens – just like the last government, which was headed by Netanyahu, managed to do.”A senior PMO official told The Times of Israel on Sunday that the prime minister was insisting that Jewish West Bank settlers be given the choice to remain in place and live under Palestinian rule, or relocate to areas under Israeli sovereign rule. The official was explaining and elaborating on comments made Friday by Netanyahu during a press conference in Davos, Switzerland. “I have said in the past, and I repeat today: I do not intend to remove a single settlement. I do not intend to displace a single Israeli,” Netanyahu said at the conference.“His consistent position has been that those settlements that will be on the Palestinian side of the border should not be uprooted,” the well-placed official said. “Just as Israel has an Arab minority, the prime minister doesn’t see why Palestine can’t have a Jewish minority. The Jews living on their side should have a choice whether they want to stay or not.”Netanyahu first hinted at this position in his May 2011 speech to the US Congress in Washington, the official noted. “The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations,” Netanyahu said at the time. “In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders.”During that speech, he did not explicitly state that settlers located east of the border must be given the option to stay, but he has said so in several meetings in recent weeks, the official said.Bennett has issued several denunciations of the idea since Sunday.In a speech Tuesday at the Institute for National Security Studies security conference in Tel Aviv, Bennett, who heads the Orthodox-nationalist Jewish Home party and is opposed to an Israeli withdrawal from territory in the West Bank, blasted Netanyahu’s handling of the ongoing US-brokered negotiations.The Palestinians “understand we’re not going to evaporate, and we understand they’re not going to evaporate. There is a quiet acceptance. So to take this situation and overturn it with another Oslo-like idea… the heart breaks,” Bennett said.“Our forefathers and our descendants will not forgive an Israeli leader who gives up our country and divides our capital,” Bennett declared in what could be construed as a warning to Netanyahu. He also suggested that the government’s growing fear of boycotts “is what will bring on the boycott. This is no way to handle negotiations, running frightened between the capitals of the world.”On Sunday, Bennett posted a Facebook statement that said the idea of settlers saying on in “Palestine,” “reflects the loss of a moral compass. We didn’t experience 2,000 years of yearning for the Land of Israel so that we could live under the government of Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas). Anyone thinking of placing the lives of Jews in the Land of Israel under Palestinian rule is pulling the rug out from under our presence in Tel Aviv.“I call on the prime minister to immediately reject this terrible idea,” he concluded.In his speech on Tuesday, Bennett offered a more immediate concern with leaving Jews under Palestinian rule.“Do you know why, why Jews cannot live under Palestinian rule, why Palestinians can’t rule over Jews? Because they will kill them,” Bennett said at a conference in Tel Aviv. “And do you know how I know this? Because it has already happened.”Bennett went on to recount in gory detail some of the events of the 1929 massacre in Hebron, in which 67 Jews were killed during Arab riots, and of the lynching of two off-duty IDF soldiers in Ramallah in 2000 who had sought refuge in a Palestinian police station.Bennett’s closest confidante, MK Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home), attempted to calm the escalating row between the two leaders on Wednesday.“Minister Bennett spoke about his moral stance regarding the idea of leaving Jews under Palestinian rule,” she told Israel Radio. “Minister Bennett never said anything personal against the prime minister. Not one word attacks the prime minister personally. But [Bennett] sees it as his duty to attack this trial balloon. Morally and practically, we feel this idea of transferring Jewish towns to Palestinian rule is a dangerous, un-Zionist act. We were not elected to stand silent,” he said.Some MKs expressed support for Bennett, while others called on him to apologize.

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, considered a member of the hawkish flank in Netanyahu’s Likud party, called Bennett “my friend,” but urged him, “specifically because of our similar views, to apologize to the prime minister. The argument over where Jews will live under a future agreement is a pointless one. Only yesterday, [Abbas] reiterated his demands for a ‘just solution’ to five million Palestinian refugees, and [said] that Jerusalem, including the Old City, will be the Palestinian capital. With such stances [on the other side], there is no chance of an agreement in any case. So why divide our forces?” Katz said.But others on the right were distinctly more disposed toward Bennett. MK Yoni Chetboun, of Bennett’s Jewish Home party, said “it is a great privilege to be reprimanded for insisting that Jews live under Israeli sovereignty. It’s time to lead with clear values in the face of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the rest of the world,” he said.Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely explained why it was important to challenge Netanyahu.“When all the tactical moves like this week’s trial balloon are taken together,” she wrote in a statement posted to Facebook on Tuesday, “they create a loss of direction. [Abbas’s] real face is clear to all, in light of his words and deeds. There is no need for political acrobatics to show the world which side is rejecting peace.”Those, like Hotovely, who are resisting the prime minister’s moves, she wrote, “are creating a foundation for Netanyahu to be able to say to the Americans that he doesn’t have the political base to establish a Palestinian state. We’re not planning to replace Netanyahu, but to set political boundaries.”Raphael Ahren and Spencer Ho contributed to this report.

Obama promises security for ‘Israel – a Jewish state’

State of the Union address includes gesture to key negotiating point; Kerry works to enlist interfaith support for talks

By Rebecca Shimoni Stoil January 29, 2014, 6:26 am 4-The times of Israel

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama delivered a brief but ringing recognition of Israel as a Jewish state during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, reinforcing a key Israeli negotiating point in the ongoing talks with the Palestinian Authority.“As we speak, American diplomacy is supporting Israelis and Palestinians as they engage in difficult but necessary talks to end the conflict there; to achieve dignity and an independent state for Palestinians, and lasting peace and security for the State of Israel – a Jewish state that knows America will always be at their side,” Obama told both houses of Congress, gathered for the annual report.The president’s affirmation of support garnered a standing ovation from both Democrats and Republicans.Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has been a red-line demand for Israeli negotiators throughout the past six months of the nine-month period during which both sides have agreed to hold talks.Speaking earlier Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at the Institute for National Security Studies that the first of Israel’s two demands in negotiations is “recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people.”Netanyahu said that the refusal of Palestinians and their supporters to recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland “is the root of the conflict.”“When we talk about an agreement, we’re talking about an agreement where we will be asked to recognize a Palestinian national state. Shouldn’t we demand that the Jewish national state be recognized as well?” Netanyahu added.Obama’s administration – and first and foremost Secretary of State John Kerry – have devoted intense effort in recent weeks toward bridging the gaps between the Palestinian and Israeli negotiating positions.On Tuesday, Kerry met with a group of some 30 clergy members and scholars representing Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities in America in order to call upon them to help the administration advance the peace process.The gathering, held at Georgetown University and hosted by the university’s president, was designed to further interfaith engagement around the peace process, and participants said that there was a clear emphasis on encouraging dialogue within and among faith communities in the United States.In his remarks, Kerry offered enthusiasm and hope for the process and outlined what might be gained from a final status agreement. Some of the opportunities he identified included Israel being able to make peace and expand its relationships with the entire Arab and Muslim community, trade with foreign nations and Israeli GDP increasing overall.The State Department has recently boosted its efforts to support the peace process through community outreach, bringing aboard non-pulpit clergy and other faith leaders to engage communities.“The premise of the discussion seemed to be about the secretary’s and State Department’s desire to bring faith leaders into the dialogue to build the community level so that its not just political leaders but a public discourse,” said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly.

Hamas to allow 120 Fatah leaders back into Gaza

Diplomatically isolated by Egypt, Hamas tries to break the ice with Fatah and forge ‘reconciliation’ government

By Elhanan Miller January 29, 2014, 6:06 pm 0-The Times of Israel

Hamas will allow more than 120 Fatah officials banished from the Gaza Strip during the Islamist group’s violent takeover in 2007 to return to the Palestinian enclave in a bid to advance reconciliation efforts with its Ramallah-based rival.Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told satellite news channel Al-Kitab Monday evening that Hamas would soon let some Fatah leaders return to the Strip, and release a number of Fatah political prisoners from Hamas prisons, in a bid to push forward the reconciliation process.The two Palestinian movements have been unable to implement the terms of two reconciliation agreements signed in 2012; the first in Doha, Qatar, in February and the second in Cairo in May, paving the way for the establishment of a unity government headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of national elections.Nearly all of Fatah’s security and political officials were forced to flee Gaza following Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. Both Palestinian governments suppress the activities of their rivals in the territory they control.Breaking a long freeze in talks, Fatah’s chief negotiator with Hamas Azzam Al-Ahmad secretly resumed talks with Hamas’s political No. 2, Moussa Abu Marzouk, earlier this month.On January 8, Qatari news channel Al Jazeera, a station close to Hamas, reported that the secretary general of one of Gaza’s smaller factions has been engaged in mediation efforts between the two movements. Haniyeh called Abbas in early January, updating the Ramallah leader on the “goodwill gestures” Hamas has undertaken in Gaza, Hamas leader Salah Bardawil told Al Jazeera.Under increasingly growing political pressure from Egypt, Hamas’s interest in realizing reconciliation is higher than than that of Fatah, which enjoys the diplomatic support of both Egypt and Jordan.A diplomatic source speaking to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity said that Abbas had little will to cut a deal with Hamas, preferring “to see the Islamic movement sweat.”

Netanyahu: Israel not obligated by US peace plan

Prime minister refrains from directly responding to Naftali Bennett on the prospect of settlers remaining in future Palestine

By Spencer Ho January 28, 2014, 10:19 pm 7-The Times of Israel

Israel is not bound to agree to all points of an imminent US proposal for a peace agreement with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech Tuesday night.“The Americans are working to solidify American positions,” he said at the Institute for National Security Studies conference. “Israel does not have to accept every American position.” He said the American proposal would be presented soon.Netanyahu also reiterated his position that he does not “want a bi-national state and… this reflects the desires of most Israelis.” However, he qualified, neither does he want another “state sponsored by Iran” next door to Israel — a reference to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and Lebanon — so “the Palestinian state must be demilitarized, and therefore some symbols of [its] sovereignty must be limited.”

Netanyahu also expressed some doubt as to “whether the Palestinians are really ready to grapple with the concessions they will have to make” in order to reach a peace agreement. He did give some grudging praise to the Palestinian Authority, however, saying it does not use terrorism in pursuit of its goals, unlike Hamas.

“We stand on two basic principles [that we require of the Palestinians],” he said. “The first is recognition of the State of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people. This is the root of the conflict. The conflict is not about the settlements, its not about the settlers, and it’s not about a Palestinian state. The Zionist movement agreed to recognize a Palestinian state.“The conflict is over the Jewish state… We are asked to recognize a national Palestinian state, so can we not also demand [that they] recognize a national Jewish state?” he said.

The second principle, Netanyahu said, was demilitarization. Elaborating, he said, constant incitement against Israel among the Palestinians had created a climate in which Israel required a substantial “security presence” in order to protect itself. That included a “long-term” presence in the Jordan Valley and other areas. (In a filmed address to the conference broadcast earlier Tuesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said all Israeli troops would have to leave Palestinian territory within years after a permanent accord was signed.) The best formulation to summarize Israel’s vision for a viable two-state solution, said the prime minister, was that the Palestinians establish “a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.”

Despite speaking about two states for two peoples, the prime minister refrained from directly broaching the hot topic of allowing West Bank settlers to choose whether they want to relocate to sovereign Israeli territory or remain under Palestinian rule under a future peace agreement. Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett had continued his campaign against the proposal in an earlier speech he made at the same conference.“Do you know why? Why Jews cannot live under Palestinian rule? Do you know why? Why Palestinians can’t rule over Jews?” Bennett said, reiterating a point he’d made on Facebook earlier in the day. “Because they will kill them. And do you know how I know this? Because it has already happened.”

Netanyahu did say that Israel did not want to make the Palestinians citizens of Israel — as Bennett suggests for 70,000 Palestinians in West Bank areas he would annex — and that Israel does not want “to rule over” the Palestinians.Bennett has been caught up in a war of words with the Prime Minister’s Office since a PMO official, elaborating on a statement Netanyahu made in Switzerland Friday, told The Times of Israel on Sunday that the prime minister does not intend to uproot Jewish settlements anywhere in the West Bank as part of a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians, and wants to allow settlers the choice of remaining under Palestinian rule.That comment elicited a flurry of criticism from right-wing politicians, including Bennett and many members of the prime minister’s own Likud party.An unnamed PMO official told Israel Radio on Monday that Likud MKs who spoke out against Netanyahu’s proposal were welcome to relinquish their posts. Another official took Bennett to task for behaving in a “nationally irresponsible” manner for the sake of making headlines, and hindering the prime minister’s effort “to reveal the true face of the Palestinian Authority” as an unwilling peace partner.The proposal was roundly dismissed by the Palestinian Authority, prompting a sharp condemnation from the PMO.“Nothing shows the Palestinian Authority’s unwillingness to reach an accord with Israel more than their extreme and reckless reaction to an unofficial report,” Netanyahu’s office said late Sunday. “An accord will only be reached when the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state and when the essential interests to the security of Israeli citizens are guaranteed.”In the wake of that exchange, Israel’s chief negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, implied that, rather than pursue a peace agreement in earnest, some Israeli officials have been baiting the Palestinians so as to elicit responses that could be construed as rejectionist.Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.