(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, last night (Wednesday, 1 October 2014), was interviewed by National Public Radio's Inskeep, Univision's Jorge Ramos, and MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. Today he is due to be interviewed by Fox's Greta Van Susteren and CNN's Fareed Zakaria, as well as appear on CBS's Face the Nation.

Following are excerpts from Prime Minister Netanyahu's interview on Univision regarding reports on the construction in Jerusalem and the similarity between ISIS and Hamas:

"This isn't a settlement. These are neighborhoods in Jerusalem. If you said to me that in some city in the United States or in Mexico, or anywhere else, Jews cannot buy apartments, there would be an uproar. You know, there's not only the freedom of property, but the right of every individual to live where they want, as long as they purchase the apartment legally and don't expropriate, don't take over, which isn't the case here. This was a free transaction. So I just want to understand this policy. It flies in the face of American values, and it flies in the face of common sense." (In his MSNBC interview, the Prime Minister added that the criticism was levelled at a mixed neighborhood in which a large portion of the approved construction will be designated for Arab residents alongside Jewish residents.)

"I didn't say that Hamas and ISIS are twins. I said that they're brothers. They're branches as I said in the UN of the same poison tree of militant Islam. They both share fanatic ideology of first getting these enclaves of militant Islam and then expanding them through terror ultimately to in their view, to dominate the world. Now, they also share the same fanatic methods. And they're very similar, though not identical."