​(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Tuesday, 20 March 2018), in Dimona, addressed the 8th Negev Conference. Following are excerpts from his remarks:
 
"In wake of the film The Ancestral Sin, I instructed the Cabinet Secretary to check the issue with the World Zionist Organization. The check showed that while the documents are indeed open, they are not accessible. Therefore I made a decision – they will be accessible to everyone in Israel, to everyone in the world, completely accessible. As we did with the Yemenite children affair, so we will do here."
 
"This morning, before coming here, I met with Elon Musk, a man of vision, perhaps the greatest technological visionary of our time. He is a genius.
 
He told me that 'Israel is a technological power.' He said that he appreciates what we are doing here. And then he said, and he did not know I was coming here, he told me 'The Negev could provide you with all your energy needs. The Negev is the energy future of the State of Israel. You could spread solar systems here that would give you more energy than you need or could need. Clean energy.'
 
I tell you what he told me: 'If you only want it' and I tell you that I want it. I want a vibrant, flourishing and developing Negev. And we will continue to do this, to develop it as has never been done in the history of Israel."
 
"Israel is surrounded by outposts of radical Islam; therefore, we need to safeguard our borders. We have completed a major endeavor: Building a fence along more than 200 kilometers of border with Sinai. Were it not for the fence, we would be faced with a broken trough – severe attacks by Sinai terrorists, and something much worse, a flood of illegal migrants from Africa. We are talking about a Jewish and democratic state but how could we assure a Jewish and democratic state with 50,000 and then 100,000 and 150,000 migrants a year. After a million, 1.5 million, one could close up shop. But we have not closed down. We built a fence and at the same time, with concern for security needs, we are making a major investment in infrastructures."