Would a BBC interviewer be willing to hand over half of Britain to people who made a habit of killing Britons?

That was the question Habayit Hayehudi chairman Naftali Bennett posed on BBC's "Hard Talk" on Tuesday, when interviewer Stephen Sackur asked about Bennett's objection to granting Palestinians sovereignty.

Every time Israel cedes land to the Palestinians, Bennett said, "they kill us."

"Would you hand over half of Britain to someone who keeps on killing you?" he asked.

"For 20 years we tried this direction," said Bennett, citing the Oslo Accord peace deals signed in 1993 and 1995 and the Camp David summit of 2000, when the Palestinians rejected then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offer of a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem.

"And you know what they did?" asked Bennett, who serves as Israel's economy minister. "They killed 1,000 Israelis."

The second intifada began in 2000, not long after Barak returned from Camp David.

"It's not working," said Bennet. "It's time to try a different approach."

The suggestion made by Bennett, who was a high-tech entrepreneur before turning to politics, was having Israelis and Palestinians go into business together - an approach he said meant "peace between the people."

"Businesses in Judea and Samaria of Israelis and Palestinians together," said Bennett, using the biblical term for the West Bank. "That's the real bridge to peace, build it bottom-up, because clearly the diplomats are failing."

Sackur said chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat had said on the talk show that the PA recognized Israel as part of the Oslo Accords. Erekat has repeatedly said the Palestinians are seeking a two-state solution.

"We don't see any other solution than a two-state solution," Erekat told Foreign Policy in an interview published last year.

But Bennett offered his own interpretation of Erekat's intentions, saying the Palestinians just want to take the State of Israel for themselves.

“Here’s what Erekat is essentially saying: Divide the land, give us half of it, first of all," said Bennett. "Now we have our Palestinian state, and now let’s start debating your half, and let’s turn it into a binational state.”

“No,” Bennett said. “It’s got to be the homeland of the Jews. We only have one homeland, the Arabs have 22 — 300 times the size of our tiny state. I don’t know how many of your viewers realize that from the ocean to the Green Line it’s a 10-minute ride. That’s how narrow our state is, but he wants a piece of that.”