(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting:
"Italy has experienced an earthquake that could be very severe. I would like to tell my friend, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, that Israel is ready and willing to send assistance to the best of our ability. We take care to maintain high readiness for disasters such as occurred at the construction site in Tel Aviv and this also serves us in cases of earthquakes. We do not know what the effects of these earthquakes will be, but the State of Israel is prepared and we are ready to help our Italian friends. We also appreciate the strong and clear statement we heard from Italy on many issues that are important to us. The State of Israel welcomes the president of Italy, who arrived here yesterday.
In two weeks, President Reuven Rivlin will leave on a visit to India. This is in continuation of the president of India's visit here. In the next three months, I will leave for Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Singapore and Australia. For three of these, if I am not mistaken, it will be the first visit by an Israeli prime minister.
Next month the Polish government will be here for a meeting with the government of Israel. Israel's international relations are developing in Asia, Africa, Latin America and in many other places. We are aware that this development stems from the economic and technological strengthening of Israel on the one hand and our security and intelligence capabilities on the other. Both of these facilitate the development and flourishing of our international relations. This is not to say that we will not be challenged in international forums, like we saw in the scandalous UNESCO decisions, and it is likely that this will continue at the UN, but there is no doubt that even in international institutions, even in these scandalous votes, we have seen a change.
I would like to thank the President of Tanzania for taking a stand along with the Croatian representative. In effect, they torpedoed the practical effect of the second UNESCO decision by preventing consensus. This is an additional indication of the major change that is taking place in Israel's global relations, in direct proportion to Israel's strength.