Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he "will not accept" the situation in which one million Israelis, including many children, are targeted on a daily basis, in an address Monday in Ashkelon (south) to around 100 foreign ambassadors and diplomats based in Israel on the ongoing firing of dozens of rockets from Gaza into Israel.
"If an alarm is sounded, all of us have exactly 30 seconds to find shelters. This is the situation in which one million Israelis find themselves in. That’s families, old people, children, babies – Including like the children who stand here,” he said.
He added: “A million Israelis, including many little children, like the ones here, are targeted on a daily basis, by people who took areas that we vacated, that the Government of Israel vacated, came in there, and are now hiding behind civilians, while firing on civilians, firing on our children."
He continued by saying: “I don’t know of any of your governments who could accept such a thing. I don’t know of any of the citizens of your cities, who could find that acceptable and something that could proceed on a normal basis. I think the whole world understands that this is not acceptable. It’s something that the people of Israel can’t accept and it’s something that I, as the Prime Minister of Israel, I cannot accept it."
He said that “ we are going to fight for the rights of our people to defend themselves.“
Stressing that Israel "will take whatever action is necessary to put a stop to this", he added that "this is not merely our right, it’s also our duty."
"It is something that I think is understood not only by you, who are here in Ashkelon today, but by any fair-minded person in any fair-minded government in the world they would understand that it’s our right to defend our people, and this is what we shall do."
At the meeting, a student from the Negev university in Beersheba also told the diplomats about the nuances of living under the threat of terror on a minute by minute basis.
“Every sound we hear might be a bomb or an alarm,” the 17-year-old student, Paz Azran, said. "When there is an alarm, the only thing we can think about is getting to a shelter. I have to think twice before taking a shower, or even walking down the street. Where you see a building, I see a bomb shelter,”Azran said.