Netanyahu Rejects UN Ban's Remarks

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's remarks blaming the "Israeli occupation" for the summer confrontation with Hamas, the Palestinian faction controlling the Gaza Strip.

At a joint press conference Monday before their meeting, Netanyahu said "The root cause of the violence that burst from Gaza is not Israel's occupation in Gaza, for a simple reason: Israel doesn't occupy Gaza."
 
"Israel left Gaza to the very last centimeter, to the very last inch," Netanyahu said. "We uprooted all the settlements and vacated all the settlers. So there is no Israeli occupation of Gaza."
 
"The root cause of this summer's outburst of violence was Hamas' rocketing of Israeli cities, and these rocket attacks often exploited U.N. neutrality, using U.N. facilities and U.N. schools as part of the Hamas machine of terror," he continued.
 
"And when rockets were discovered inside U.N. schools, some U.N. officials handed them back to Hamas -- that very same Hamas that was rocketing Israeli cities and Israeli civilians," Netanyahu said.
 
"The root cause of Hamas' rocket fire on Israel is Hamas' opposition to Israel's very existence. Hamas doesn't give a hoot for the 1967 lines. For them, Israel has no right to live, in any borders," he continued. 

"Hamas rejects our very existence. They're committed to killing every Israeli and every Jew. You just have to read their charter -- they say that very plainly," he said, adding that "real peace can only be achieved through bilateral negotiations with those who believe in peace," Netanyahu told the U.N. secretary-general.