​ (Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this morning (Sunday, 29 January 2017), at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, made the following remarks:
 
"I would like to welcome our friends Ayoob Kara and Eli Cohen, who are joining the Cabinet as ministers. I am certain that they will work together with the other ministers for the good of the state of Israel and its citizens. I am pleased to see them here.
 
Tomorrow we will submit to the Knesset what is being called ‘the normalization law’. The law is designed to normalize the status of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria once and for all and prevent recurrent attempts to harm the settlement enterprise.
 
We are currently marking 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations with China and India. Today the Cabinet will be briefed on the progress in these relations. We are indeed making exceptional progress. Relations with these two major powers are flourishing in an extraordinary manner which, how does the saying go? Together with Israel, their populations reach almost one-third of the world's population. But relations are truly seeing a dramatic upturn – trade delegations, the magnitude of trade – and I would say, mutual relations in many areas including security, tourism and technology. Simply put, there has been a major breakthrough here and I think that the fact that Israel such strong relations with two of the world's major powers attests to the status of Israel among the nations, a position that is becoming stronger due to our technological, military and intelligence capabilities.
 
But, of course, I would like to note again that our fundamental alliance is with the United States. There is no substitute for this alliance. Our relations are tight and getting tighter and I would like to take this opportunity to make it unequivocally clear that our position has always been, and will always be, that the US embassy needs to be here, in Jerusalem.
 
Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and it is proper that not only should the American embassy be here, but all embassies should come here, and I believe that over time most of them will indeed come here, to Jerusalem.
 
We will change our agenda a little due to the illness of Rabbi Shteinman. I would like to wish him a quick and full recovery. He is a very important man not only in the ultra-orthodox world but to the Jewish People, and I join the public at large which is praying for his health and well-being."