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Yuval Steinitz: It is not easy, but we cannot allow ourselves to ignore the smuggling of arms, explosives, rockets, maybe in the future, Katyusha rockets, into Gaza, because not operating in Rafah means to suffer from Katyusha rockets in Ashkelon. So it is our right and duty, even, to defend our citizens, and since the Egyptians are doing nothing to stop the smuggling of arms and explosives for terrorists, we have to, we are forced to do such an overall operation in the Rafah region.

David Essing: The Jerusalem Post reports today, quoting a senior IDF officer, that what we’ve seen hearing about the build-up of Katyusha rockets and anti-missile, uh, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles in Sinai is simply not true.

Yuval Steinitz: Well, I don’t want to go into details, but clearly there are attempts to bring other kinds of weapons, including long-range rockets, including anti-tanks and anti-aircraft rockets. And there should be no surprise even, because we saw already, attempts to smuggle Katyusha rockets and surface-to-air missiles into Gaza in the Karine-A ships that we intercepted, but she, the ship was on its way to Gaza. The Santorini ship that came from Lebanon, again with anti-aircraft missiles and heavy mortars and things like that, from Lebanon to Gaza. So, we already disclosed, and discovered some attempts to smuggle such kind of weapons into Gaza and therefore, it’s extremely important to seal the border, to discover the tunnels, to arrest the smugglers, or the leaders of the smugglers and to do more in order to prevent such smuggling from going on.

David Essing: After your meeting with Prime Minister Sharon today, do you have a better idea of where he’s headed when he, when it comes the step-by-step plan he’s talking about pulling out of settlements like Netzarim and Kfar Darom and do you support it now?

Yuval Steinitz: Yes, I have a better idea but I am unable to elaborate because it was a “four-eyes” [face-to-face] meeting and I never elaborate or disclose from “four-eyes” meetings, so you will have to excuse me.

David Essing: Do you support the step-by-step approach now?

Yuval Steinitz: I thought that the general idea of unilateral disengagement from Gaza and Gaza alone was a positive idea. That Gaza is kind of a demographic burden on Israel and also on the fate of the Judean and Samaria, which are much more important strategically, but much less pressing demographically, if you disconnect the fate of Gaza from Judea and Samaria. But we will have to wait and see if it first passes the government because this is the main obstacle now.

David Essing: Finally, the statement by Justice Minister Tommy Lapid, both in the government and on the BBC, that the scenes of an elderly Arab women rummaging through the remains of her blown-up building and so forth, in Rafah, caused him to remember the same sight of his own grandmother during the period of the Holocaust. What’s your reaction to that?

Yuval Steinitz: I think it was extremely unwise remark. Of course, it is trivial that the scene of destroyed, or destructed buildings is similar in every war on the face of Earth. In the Second World War, in the war in Afghanistan, in the war in Iraq, in the war between us and the Arab, in the war between us and the Palestinians, it’s always the same. But to make such a comparison with Second World War was extremely unwise, to say the least, because it might use or misused by Israel’s enemies, by many anti-Semitic circles in Europe in order to try to compare Israel to the Nazis rather than to compare the terrorists who purposefully massacred the Hatual Family, the little children in the car, who executed the little children in the car from two meters’ distance, to the Nazis and this is bad enough.

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