"We believe that we should come to an agreement with the Palestinians. But we need two to tango."

"We have been in the territories since 1967. In 2002, we had sometimes three or four suicide attacks every day. We came to the conclusion that it can't continue like that."

"We are not going to damage our safety and our security. We're not going to give those extremists the privilege to come so freely to Israel in order to carry out more attacks against us and kill us one day after another."

"In 1988, King Hussein of Jordan said that it doesn't take any connection any more to those territories, and he would like to split from those territories. So according to the international law, it doesn't belong to anyone."

"The security fence is reversible. Human lives are irreversible."

"It's not a democracy here, it's the Middle East."

"In my view, Arafat is the only Palestinian in the world that isn't willing to have an independent Palestinian state."

"Most of the international community, most of the countries around the world, don't want any side, any party to take unilateral steps. They would like that all of us to stick to the road map."

"Cease-fire is important, but it can last only for a very, very, very short time."

"I'd like to ask you: what you would prefer us to do? I'd like to ask my colleagues, would any other country act differently? I think the answer is very clear. No one would act differently."

"No one can compare us to the apartheid regime. It's not like in South Africa between the blacks and the whites who belong to the same nation, or in Berlin where you find parents living on the eastern side and their children in the western side."

"We would like to ease the life of the Palestinians. I prepared a new plan that we call a positive agenda."