choosing now to sit down with cnn for an exclusive interview, his first televised interview since returning to power. in recent days the u.s. secretary of state, cia director and the white house national security adviser have all converged here. a clear sign that the biden administration and closest allies realize this region is frankly on the precipes. over the next hour you re hear from prime minister benjamin netanyahu on a number of key topics including how he envisions any sort of peace with the palestinians. the backlash to his new right-wing coalition government, whether israel plans to further help ukraine in its war against russia, including militarily and his relationships with both the current and former presidents of the united states. we started our conversation on the surge of violence between israelis and palestinians, which in recent days set off fears of perhaps a new uprising that could lead to a bloody, deadly war. tonight, the u.s. state department confirm
lebanon, basically iran came in with its proxy hezbollah. we moved out of gaza, the hamas took over. if we just walk away, as people suggest, then you ll have hamas and iran move into the hills around jerusalem overlooking tel aviv. so i think there s a formula for peace. but my view is because of the fact that the continue yum, the persistent palestinian review to refuse a jewish, that persists. if we wait for them, we re not going to have peace. people said you have to work your way outside in. first, inside out. first peace with the palestinians, peace with the arab world. i think realistically it has to be the ore way around. we make peace with saudi arabia, depends on the saudi leadership. and bring the conflict to an end, i think we ll circle back to the palestinians and get a workable peace with the palestinians.
but what we encountered in last two years including in the outgoing government was doubling of terrorist attacks from the palestinians because the palestinian authority was not really exercising its power to fight the terrorists. so the israeli army had to come in and we had to come in the last few weeks, too. i m taking targeted action against the terrorists. their immediate circle of supporters who were involved in helping them do the terror acts or celebrated with fireworks and the candies and other things that after the terrorist act. we think if we take targeted action on the terrorists and their immediate immediate circle, this can actually lower the incentive for what we call lone terrorists. they re not lone, they re within a context. so you want to want to target them but keep the economy going, keep 150,000 palestinians works in israel, haven t close it even if r a minute. i don t intend to. so right now everyone in the
going to succeed is not let the palestinian tail wag the body of the arab world. get the peace with the arab world and get the more rekal is a strint palestinians moved out, not physically from dominating the political scene, you ll have the israeli public with outstretched hand for real peace. you asked me about saudi arabia. i ll come back in a second. but there s one other big news that happened just in the last few days. it s been a very eventful few days. and that is over the weekend unidentified quad continuer drones attacked a military plant deep inside iranian territory. you talked about the need for israel and you in fact said this is a cause of yours, a mission of yours to protect the israeli people from an existential threat from iran and iran s nuclear program. the incident was nearly identical to previous attacks said to have been carried out by israel, including a series of drone strikes against iranian nuclear facilities in 2021 and
i don t know which ones specifically you re talking about. some are illegal and there are concerns about expanding some of those settlements, about annexing land. what did secretary blinken say to you about that? because my impression is that the biden administration and certainly he said this publicly when he met with you earlier is worried about that. and worried about that bringing israel in a path where peace is never going to be possible. well, i totally disagree because i think that the fact that we re here and our people the jewish people have been here for 3,500 years, the fact that jews live here and will continue to live here and palestinians will continue to live here and we have to live together, we re not going to ethnically cleanse the heartland of the jewish people and we re not going to ethnically cleanse israel. 20% of israel s population is arabs. we re not going to say we re not going to have peace until we kick out the arabs from israel and not going to have pea