Israel needs economic strength to maintain its military might, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told an economic conference on Monday, adding that the Israeli military was the only army currently fighting against Israel's archenemy, Iran.
Speaking at the Globes Business Conference, Netanyahu said that "without military strength, they'll just slaughter you. With or without an economy they'll slaughter you. There's no choice – you need military might. And that costs money. Therefore, we need additional power in the form of economic strength."
"My plan is to strengthen Israel because the strong survive," Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu also said that to fund its military requirements, Israel needed a free market.
"You can't do it without liberalizing the economy," he said. "We've made important reforms that have increased equality. In the past, Israel was ranked second to last in measurable equality, and now we're improving [in the rankings]."
Referring to unsuccessful efforts to galvanize a popular protest movement in Israel against the rising cost of living, Netanyahu remarked: "Do you know why the yellow vest protest isn't catching on? The minimum wage in Israel is higher, in absolute terms, than in France. Contrary to reports, the price of electricity won't increase by 8% – maybe just by a few percentage points."
Turning to the question of Iran's nuclear program, the prime minister said that Israel had a "combination of a strong economy and strong [military] technology, and that gives us the ability to fulfill our needs, and of course, our main objective is to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons."
"Iran is trying to keep developing nuclear weapons, in secret. Thanks to their deal with Obama, it can enrich uranium without restraint. And they have built an empire: Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, so we need to fight it," Netanyahu said.
"Our efforts to topple this empire are being conducted largely alone," he continued. "Because Iran wants to transfer much of its army to Syria, and we are operating to prevent that. We want to block this imperialistic vision and poke a large hole in their plans."
Addressing another northern front, Netanyahu said that the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah has "at most, a few dozen" precision-guided missiles, having shut down factories for converting such weapons in Lebanon after Israel exposed them in September.
"Those sites near the Beirut airport, the underground sites for precision conversion of missiles, which [Israeli] military intelligence gave me, to expose, those sites were closed," he said.
"They are trying to open other sites. But through these measures, we are denying them precision arms."
Netanyahu discussed Israel's recent contact with Sunni Arab nations.
"A strong people makes alliances and a strong people makes peace," he said, explaining that Sunni Arab countries understood that Israel was not their enemy, and was, in fact, an ally in their fight against Islamic State and Shiite terrorism.
"When we founded the State of Israel, no one … made the development of the state conditional upon peace with the Arabs. We aspired to peace. I'm not willing to make the country's development conditional upon peace with the Palestinians. There will be other [Arab] states with which we will make peace," he said.
Netanyahu said he did not believe that the Palestinians were awaiting a peace offer from Israel.
"If we once thought that a deal with the Palestinians was a breakthrough, that's changing. We are forming a base for ties with Saudi Arabia. We are developing a Jewish, democratic nation-state that protects the rights of the individual and respects and wants to include everyone, [including] the Arab population."
