Itongadol.- Israel shouldn’t seek recognition from the potential Palestinian state, Finance Minister Yair Lapid told CBS’s Charlie Rose in New York Monday.
“We recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” he said. “We don’t need authorization from anyone else.”
At the end of the day, Lapid said, the difference between the Palestinians and the Israelis is that “the Palestinians want peace and justice. We want peace and security.”
Rose, in true journalistic fashion, quoted Lapid’s own words back at him, words in which Lapid had said he does not support splitting Jerusalem for a Palestinian state and that “Israel should not change its policies to revive the peace process.”
Given this, Rose asked, “how do you differ from Netanyahu?” “I’m a devoted supporter of the peace process,” Lapid said.
“But that may mean some of the settlements have to be evacuated.”
“I’m not looking for a happy marriage with the Palestinians,” he said. “I’m looking for a divorce.”
Lapid spoke to Rose twice on Monday, once in a taped interview in the afternoon and again at the 92nd Street Y in the evening in front of a full audience of Jewish community leaders.
When asked what should be done about Iran, Lapid quoted US Secretary of State John Kerry in his own CBS 60 Minutes interview when he said, “A bad deal is worse than no deal.”
Lapid added that he was in favor of the type of diplomacy that took place in Syria, the kind with a “credible military threat behind it.”
Toward the end of the interview, Rose broached the topic of Lapid’s future political ambitions.
Lapid paused and gave a small smile.
“Well, I didn’t come into politics in order to make things stay the way they were,” he said. “[In] some of the things, we need a dramatic change, and it doesn’t matter if I do it as minister or prime minister, as long as I remember why I’m there and keep my eyes on the ball.”
Rose and Lapid spent most of the conversation touching on the usual talking points that concern most American Jews these days: the Palestinian conflict, the Syrian war and the Iranian nuclear program, although he purported to want to focus on the local, down-to-earth issues of everyday Israelis.