Just hours before being sworn in as Israel's ninth president on Sunday, Shimon Peres said the time had come for his nation to surrender its biblical heartland in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) to the Palestinian Arabs.

“We have to get rid of the territories,” Peres said in an interview with The Associated Press. The elder statesman insisted, contrary to recent opinion polls, that an overwhelming majority of Israelis agree with him on this issue.

In his inauguration speech later in the evening, Peres expounding upon his vision of peace for the Middle East, but Israel National News pointed out that he did not once mention ongoing Arab terrorism against the Jewish state that has made the conclusion of any peace deal impossible.

Despite filling a largely ceremonial role, an Israeli diplomatic source told The Jerusalem Post that Peres can be expected to continue behaving like a “one-man foreign ministry” as he works to forward his own agenda.