Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the storm surrounding his recent economic remarks in an interview Sunday on Galei Yisrael radio, clarifying that his comments about Israel's economy were misunderstood.
In a Friday interview with the Economy Channel, Netanyahu had said Israel would need to "organize a bypass economy with the appropriate currencies for that" if faced with banking sanctions. The statement triggered sharp reactions from economists, business leaders and senior civil servants.
"They asked me, so what will happen if there are sanctions? I said we'll deal with sanctions. We can. It's not like they haven't tried. They tried and didn't succeed," Netanyahu explained Sunday. "I answered a question about what we would do in a hypothetical future scenario. I didn't say this is what's going to happen."
He added: "There are about twenty steps we can take and have already taken with great success, and I'm certainly not committing that we'll take this particular step."
