 Good morning from Geneva. Mr. Prime Minister, a warm welcome to the Devil's Agenda Week 2022. We are really honored to have you with us in your inaugural participation with the World Economic Forum, and we look very much forward to your special address. We are particularly keen on hearing from you since you have been successful in forging a stable coalition between parties of diverse backgrounds, even including an Arab party for the first time in Israel. Additionally, as a further testament to your ability to unite diverse Israeli political system last November, your government passed the first state budget I was told in three and a half years. Mr. Prime Minister, your government faces a range of national and international challenges, including the ongoing pandemic and of course the unresolved status of Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. But there are also a range of opportunities from the phenomenal growth of the Israeli economy to the growing cross-regional trade and investment as a result of the peace agreement between Israel and the group of Arab countries. Therefore, it is with particular interest and the national community wants to hear about your government's priorities going forward. And it is my great pleasure to give you the floor for your special address. Mr. Prime Minister. Well, thank you very much, Morgan. Indeed, these are exciting times in Israel. Israel is finally on a very good and powerful path. As you mentioned, we formed the most diverse government in Israel's history with religious and secular, right and left together, an Arab party together with the Jewish parties in this coalition, eight different parties. And it's sort of like a juggle act, but it's working. We are moving forward. Our growth is phenomenal. We're at the 7% GDP growth right now. Our high tech is booming. Perhaps never has it been as strong as it is. And to begin with, for the startup nation, it's a good direction. And by and large, we are managing through the COVID waves. I landed right into the Delta wave. And my goal was to keep Israel open while keeping Israeli safe. And now, same goes with the Omicron. So we've adopted some unique methodologies here in Israel that I'd love to share later on. And of course, the most exciting part is the regional relationships that we've been forming for the past few years. My predecessor formed the Abraham Accords with Bahrain, with the Emirates. I'm a huge believer in these sort of bridges. So the bottom line is Israel is headed on a very robust and positive direction. I think as you also mentioned, Israel is now in the middle also of the Omicron crisis. You also have thousands of cases every day. I think even more than 40,000 on average. So despite this high number of cases, I think the Israeli economy, as you mentioned, is also fueled by sprawling technology sector. And you are one that has been successful in that sector yourself. And I think the economy is now growing with more than 7%. So how do you see Omicron impacting the outlook for your country's economy? And also, how are you planning to deal with the next steps? Are we now moving from a pandemic to something becoming more endemic? Well, as you're becoming more endemic. Well, as you suggested, I'll address the two parts of the question. First of all, how does one fight the Omicron or COVID wave, and I think all the leaders of the world are facing it? What I can share is what we've been doing here. I took upon myself, I landed running, if you will, right into the wave of Delta, which we were among the first to face. My format in methodology is A, I personally run the national COVID task force as prime minister. So every day at 9am, I have an hour with all the agencies and all the ministries that are relevant. I believe this is a fairly unique model. But I do this because I think that leaders can make much quicker decisions. And in a pandemic, being slow is losing. So you're better off making decisions early on and quick and executing upon them very quickly. The second reason that I felt that it's important that I personally run the national COVID task force is because pandemics are not only about medicine or biology, they're about society, the economy, the education, logistics, math, you name it. So it's a cross-discipline challenge. And therefore you can't silo it and hand over the keys to running a government in a nation under a pandemic. You can't outsource that only to doctors because at the end of the day, there's balance between economy, education, and the pandemic-related issues. I found this very effective. So during the past seven months, which I've been around, we've shifted our approach. Before I came in, the approach was major lockdowns. My approach is I'm against lockdowns as far as we can. I've not even had one day of lockdown or closing down schools during my tenure. What do we do? We always want to be at the forefront of the medicine and the vaccines. I was the first world leader to go ahead with the third booster dose. That was back in the end of July. And later on, the rest of the world followed us. We have very advanced research. So we want to be the first in the world to know how vaccines and new variants respond one to another. And that's what we're doing. Secondly is just to get actions done, to get things done from policy to actual execution. So I believe Israel now is one of the leading testers per capita. We have about almost 5% of our population is tested every day right now. That's a huge number. 450,000 people go through a test every day. And that's why the case numbers are so high. Not because necessarily so many people are infected, simply because we test more. By doing these tests, we can isolate folks and slow down the pace of the infection. Now, in terms of the opportunities, I think there's some huge opportunities here, direct and indirect. Direct opportunities are in the area of fusing information technology with pandemics and medicine. The pandemic is all about data information and gleaming insights from that data. And for example, I was the first during the Omicron wave to shut the skies for a while. For a few weeks, I did that. I wanted to buy time and see what's happening in other countries. And then using their data, be able to form the correct policy. Now that we know that the Omicron is much less lethal than its predecessors, we developed a strategy that acknowledges that and allows Israel to continue operating, albeit at a lower pace for a few weeks. So I see one big area, diffusion of information technology and data and medical data in order to glean actionable insights. The second area I see is way beyond medicine. The world is going remote. This sort of event, having the Davos summit through the internet, was unheard of a few years ago, and now it's almost natural. That means that the world is going to depend more and more on remote working. This provides a huge opportunity for Israel, which we've sort of exhausted most of our talent to foreign employees from Eastern Europe, from India in our companies, to a much easier extent. And finally, it means that the world, as the world becomes more dependent on remote methodology, it means that we're also going to be more vulnerable to cyber attacks, which means we need good cyber defense. And Israel has massively invested in cyber defense technologies. And I believe roughly half or almost half of the global investments in cyber companies over the past few years have been in Israel. So Israel has become a powerhouse in cyber defense. I see a bunch of opportunities and we intend to seize them. Thank you. You also, Prime Minister, mentioned the Abraham Accords. I looked at the numbers on trade between Israel and UAE, and it has skyrocketed in a year's time. Where do you see these Abrams Accords moving? Are there additional Arab countries going to join? And who do you see the economic potential? Well, first of all, my approach is to build bridges. Build bridges in the region. And I think we've been doing that for the past few years. We have a common foe in the region, and that's Iran. We need the reasonable-minded countries that want to fight extreme Islam collaborating. And I think more and more regional partners are coming to see Israel as an anchor of stability in a very tumultuous region, and not only in the security sense, but also in economy. So the short answer is absolutely yes. One of the first things I did as Prime Minister was go out and meet King Abdullah and strengthen and warm the relationships after a few years of sour relationships between Jordan and Israel. Likewise, I went out to meet President Sisi. These are two very impressive leaders of countries that face their own challenges. And I noticed that the trade with Egypt is piney. And what I want to do is inject more content into these relationships that we have. At the same time, I met Mbz, a very impressive guy who went through a very tough week this week. But he is a visionary that wants to build a good future for his people. And so we want more countries to join the Abraham Accords, and we want to inject more content mostly in technology, but not only technology-related areas. I view the UAE sort of a gate to the east. And I see Africa as a big potential partner with Israel where we're located. We're on the very connection between Africa and Asia and Europe. So we're located in a very interesting location. Indeed. And in the recent months, you have even announced on several occasions that you intend to improve the economic security and humanitarian conditions of the Palestinian people. For example, your foreign minister, Mr. Lapid, has announced that there will be a new plan for Gaza that entails also increasing investments in return for security. As another example, I also saw that President Abbas has held talks with your defense minister, Benny Gantz, last December. So could you tell us how these initiatives and overtures translate into concrete terms of furthering peace between Ramallah and Jerusalem Tel Aviv? Well, we've actually done a bunch of actions already on the ground. I'm a big believer in getting things done, not only talking about it in corridors. So one of the first things I did as prime minister was open Gaza for Gaza employees to work in Israel. Many years, they've not. And now we're talking already about 10,000. I'm looking out a decision to potentially expand this. Likewise, in Judea and Samaria or the PA, we have tens of thousands of Palestinians that every day come into Israel and work and make a good living for their families. And I'm increasing that because we have a very big gap in GDP between our GDP and the PA and certainly Gaza. So it's a win-win for everyone. So my first policy is to improve the quality of lives of everyone here, whether in Gaza or Judea and Samaria or Israel itself. And I believe that through business, through economy, through jobs, it's the most sustainable way to bring stability. I'm promoting and support industrial zones, joint industrial zones, Palestinian Israelis, allowing Palestinians to work in the very advanced Israeli high-tech sector, increasing trade between Jordan and the PA. So basically, my approach is all in on economy. At the same time, though, we have to be cognizant of the fact that there's always meaningful terror threat from the Palestinians to Israel. We've seen it time and again. Even in the past few weeks, we've had some terror events. So I want to be very clear about that. I will not do anything that could hinder or threaten Israel's security or weaken our ability to defend ourselves by ourselves. Ultimately, the Palestinians have a big choice to make, whether they want to go down the path of terror or the path of peace and prosperity. Ultimately, that's their choice to make. I just want them to know that we here are very positive about prosperity and people-to-people peace. Prime Minister, you already mentioned that UAE has had a tough week. And that's also due to the attacks from the Houthis. We know at the same time that there is a growing optimism in certain quarters of the international community that Iran nuclear negotiations will progress in a positive direction and lead to an agreement. And how do you look at the prospects and what would be an acceptable deal with Iran from the international community seen from your side, a kind of revised JSPOA? Well, first we need to understand what Iran's position is in the Middle East. Iran is an octopus of terror and instability. Their head is in Tehran and they send their arms all across the Middle East and get involved in Lebanon with Hezbollah in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen with their Houthis. And they sort of have anti-Midus touch. Every country they get involved with fails. Look at Lebanon now falling apart. Look at Syria. Look at Yemen. And they have a modus operandi, a very clever one, where they sort of drive out terror but through their proxies. So they lay back supine in Tehran, sort of remote from the terror that they're conducting. And they send others, their messengers to conduct terror. We've seen it in Israel with Hezbollah, with Islamic jihad, with Iranian militias in Syria. How very comfortable is it for the mullahs in Tehran to cause despair? And I think we see a very similar situation with the Houthis. Who stands behind them? It's Iran. Who funds them? Iran. Who provides them the weaponry? Iran. Who directs them what to do? Iran. So I think the first thing is for the decent countries, the free world, to call Iran on what it's doing. They are the source of terror in the Middle East. And we have to fight back. The last thing you want to do with this sort of octopus is pour tens of billions of dollars into this apparatus. Because what will you get? You'll get terror on steroids. Everything we're seeing will be doubled and tripled because they'll be much stronger. I want to point out something. Iran, while it has this very image of a powerhouse, in fact, Iran is way more vulnerable than one would think. Their economy is tanking. The real is depreciating. They are so incompetent that they're not able to get water to faucets in huge swaths of land, for example, Isfahan area. There's many, many Iranians that when they try and turn on the faucet, nothing comes out because of their regimes incompetence. We're seeing massive demonstrations of teachers, of judges, of pensioners in Iran. So it's a corrupt and failed regime. What we need is to stand strong until Iran goes through an agreement, but there's only one agreement. And that agreement, they call it longer and stronger, it means effectively that Iran has to give up its nuclear weapon program. Why would anyone legitimize their right to enrich uranium at massive capacity? They are now enriching uranium at 60% grade in these huge factories of uranium enrichment. Why are they doing it? You don't need 60% uranium for anything but a nuclear weapon in those amounts. We in Israel have the archive of their weapon program. So these guys are trying to develop a nuclear weapon. I don't see any rationale why it makes sense for the free world to sign a deal with them that would give them money and at the same time allow them to continue. I'll just leave you with one last comment. I'm a businessman. I came to age as a businessman in high tech, etc. I would say that investing in Iran is not a sound investment, whether there's a deal or not a deal. Thank you. From Iran maybe to climate change. I think your government has placed climate change as a top priority issue. And indeed you have also committed to reach net zero by 2050. Leasing Israel on an equal footing with the vast majority of developed economies. So with also your technology background, what is your vision for Israel's climate contribution? How much can be sold by new technology breakthroughs? And how much has to come with more traditional mitigation? So I think that's a great question. Indeed, what I did was put Israel on equal footing with the rest of the most of the developed countries in the world. And we took upon ourselves the commitment to reach zero net emissions by 2050. That's important, but that in itself is not that meaningful because Israel is a small country with a small carbon footprint. Where can we really move the needle? Our unique tool is our innovation. And I want to be very clear here. In order for the world to meet the 2050 net zero emission goal, we need technologies that do not exist yet. We need inventions that do not exist yet. And this is not me saying this. This is Bill Gates and anyone who looks at the picture as it is. So just by adopting better measures in our countries, it's important, but that will not go the whole distance. And Israel is perfectly placed to do this. Israel is very strong on everything that has to do with water. For a simple reason, we don't have much water in Israel. The Jews came back here about 150 years ago, but we came back home. But this home was the arid, was waterless. So we had to generate water. We have to conserve water, recycle water. Israel generates, I believe, the highest amount of water per capita in the world with desalination plants. We recycle wastewater and then use it for agriculture. And these technologies are one very important area that I intend Israel to grow. Other areas are energy related, alternative food, especially alternative meat, which we all know that the meat industry is a big cause of carbon in that atmosphere. And so we're focused on that. And here's my call. My call is actually internally to roughly 5,000 Israelis that were high-tech entrepreneurs. They already did their exit. They're already millionaires. They're good to go. I'm calling upon these young men and women now that you're set personally. Why don't you take your innovation and the energy and go found new companies in the fields of climate mitigation and climate adaptation? Because it's happening and climate change is real. And that would be much more meaningful than just another round and some internet company. I'm saying this as someone who's done a few exits myself. At the end of the day, we want to, you know, these young folks want to leave a real mark on the world, on the place we live in and make it more meaningful than just making some money. And I'm very optimistic here as well. No, thank you so much. We cannot end this session with also having a voice from your new partners in the accord, the Abram Accords. And we're very pleased that Halid Humaydon from the Bahrain Economic Development Board is with us. Hello, Halid. Good to see you. I go to you in Manama to raise a question to the Prime Minister. And thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for your insightful remarks. I'd like to thank our partners, the World Economic Forum, for giving me this opportunity. Clearly, the pandemic has reminded us all the importance of healthcare. During the pandemic, both the Kingdom of Bahrain and the state of Israel successfully managed to contain the health impact. And we did that by leading the world in the vaccination drive. Our early results helped guide the vaccination policies of other countries. In your opinion, sir, what needs to be done better to coordinate our efforts to develop the healthcare sector further? Thank you. Very good to have you here. And indeed, again, I want to thank the World Economic Forum. I think one of the key aspects that are necessary that everyone learned from these pandemics is to have a robust national database of health of our citizens. Obviously, it could be anonymized. But there is so much insight to glean from having the basic information. We in Israel are fortunate that my predecessors decades ago formed a very robust national healthcare system with good databases. So then you can sort of cross-tab and see how different medicines work differently for people with different background situations. So that's the one thing. The second thing is we need to form an ongoing agency vis-à-vis pandemics. I think every government now realizes that even if COVID goes away, we may be entering an era of global pandemics that are much more challenging than a global pandemic a century or two ago in the sense that it just goes on and on because of the rapid movement of people. It turns out you can't stop people from moving around. And I think that's the second thing. The third thing we've developed in Israel, what I call the variant radar. So we have a group of people that are on an ongoing basis looking across the world at data and calling up other countries to get the raw data to glean information. Is there a new variant? And how should we address it? That's the reason that Israel was so fast to react on the Omicron. We reacted even before Omicron got its name. It was called some long number or letters and numbers five or six weeks ago. So I think if we have a good radar that's getting intelligence, we have a good decision-making process that can make quick decisions and act upon them while sitting or leaning on a robust database and working together, I think we can beat this thing. Thank you so much, Prime Minister Vanne. This has been a great pleasure. I know that our viewers also appreciated your concrete answers and your vision. And we really are looking forward to also being able to welcome you to the physical that was hopefully very soon. So thank you so much for joining us. I'll be sure to come. I want to thank you very much for this opportunity and the World Economic Forum and everyone who's joined in. Israel is open for business. Israel is building bridges across the world with new friends. And we want to do good stuff together. Thank you very much. Thank you, Prime Minister. Bye-bye.