Likud minister: ‘Palestinians want Jaffa, Haifa and Ramle’
At service marking three years since the slaying of the Fogel family, Yisrael Katz says Palestinians want to establish a state on both sides of the pre-1967 lines.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFTransportation Minister Yisrael Katz at the Fogel Memorial, March 9, 2014.(photo credit: TOVAH LAZAROFF)
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) said on Sunday that the Palestinians want to destroy the State of Israel by creating a state of Palestine on both sides of the pre-1967 borders.Katz was speaking at a special memorial service marking three years since the Fogel family murder.“They [the Palestinians] want Jaffa and Haifa and Ramle. They are not willing to say that this is a Jewish state or to recognize our sovereignty over the Land of Israel,” Katz said.“They won’t give up on what they call ‘Palestine,’ and they want to put a million Palestinian refugees in the State of Israel,” said Katz.He spoke to a packed auditorium in the Itamar settlement, named for the Fogel family. The hundreds of participants gathered to mark the attack that occurred in March 2011, in which two Palestinians snuck into the Fogel home and stabbed to death Udi Fogel, 36, his wife Ruth, 35, and three of their six children: Yoav, 11, Elad, four, and Hadas, three-months-old.He, and other politicians who spoke, emphasized their support for Judea and Samaria and Israel’s right to continue to build Jewish homes in Area C of the West Bank.Economy Minister Naftali Bennett (Bayit Yehudi) said that he traveled to Itamar on the same road that the biblical forefathers of the Jews had once walked.Israel is the only country in the world that speaks the language of the Bible, he said.He spoke against any call to evacuate isolated settlements and retain only the blocs in a final status agreement with the Palestinians.Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi) said that “not even one settlement in Judea and Samaria will be uprooted,” and called for Israel to annex the West Bank.
“Israeli citizens will only be under full Israeli sovereignty. And west of the Jordan River there will only be one state and that is the state of Israel,” he said.Katz and Samaria Regional Council head Gershon Mesika called for death sentences to be imposed on Palestinian terrorists, such as the two who killed the Fogel family.“I would say that these people are animals, but there are animals who behave better,” Katz said. “Such people are worthy of only one sentence — a death sentence. It’s forbidden to release them into the world.”Other politicians who spoke at the memorial included Agriculture Minister Yair Shamir (Yisrael Beytenu), Education Minister Shai Peron (Yesh Atid) and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.Bayit Yehudi MK Ayelet Shaked’s car was pummeled with rocks on her way to the memorial. Shaked and her aides were not injured.Soon after, Shaked’s office received e-mails saying the rocks were “criminal sanctions from God,” since the Knesset committee she leads authorized criminal sanctions on haredim who do not serve in the IDF.Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.
