Shimon Peres

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told CNN on Monday that terror is Israel's enemy -- the Palestinian people are not.

Peres spoke to CNN after the release of the Mitchell Committee report, which recommended several steps Israel and the Palestinian Authority should take toward resuming peace talks after nearly eight months of violence.

CNN anchor Lou Waters spoke to Peres on Monday while Peres was on a trip to Moscow.

WATERS: Do you agree with the Mitchell report that the culture of peace nurtured over the previous decade is being shattered, Minister Peres?

PERES: I think we shouldn't waste time. We shouldn't let any more violence -- shooting and killing -- happen. A cease-fire should enter into becoming a new reality as soon as possible. We shouldn't again fall asleep in the face of the grave dangers that we are facing.

WATERS: Israel accepts the report, you say, but does it agree with the premise that Israel must freeze Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, needs to find non-lethal responses to unarmed demonstrations and must refrain from the destruction of homes and roads? That's a heavy order.

VIDEO Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tells CNN his country's latest strikes against the Palestinians were 'very measured.' (May 21) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

PERES: Well, you have to see the document as a whole. You cannot select just one item. As the secretary remarked, rightly, there is no connection between the confidence-building measures and the cease-fire. Let's do first things first.

Now, about the settlements, Israel declared very clearly that we do not intend to build new settlements. We do not intend to confiscate land, and we do not intend to extend territorially the existing settlements. I think that this falls very much in line with the recommendations.

WATERS: But how do you build confidence among the Palestinians in a concrete manner? It has been suggested by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that perhaps a temporary freeze on settlements be declared as a means to do that.

PERES: No, he didn't say so. I didn't hear him saying so. But I want to say, first of all, if we shall have a cease-fire, the whole atmosphere will be changed.

Israel, by the way, did not wait for a cease-fire; we have announced, out of our own initiative, that we have decided to change our policies in the territories, to stop the closure, to increase the numbers permitted for people to work in Israel, to open up the roads and to build some new economic occasions for the Palestinians.

We are really interested in building confidence because the psychological infrastructure, so to speak, is extremely negative, and all of us have to join forces to build a new trust in new relations. Our enemies are not the Palestinians. We are fighting against terror, not against the people.

WATERS: So are you saying that there is a new strategy in dealing with the demonstrations in Israel, including the use of F-16s, which the vice president of the United States says is very worrisome? Has that all changed?

PERES: First of all, Israel has never initiated any act of terror, and the response was very measured, as much as we could. But we had a very terrible week last week. There were 12 attempts to bomb public places. Just by miracles, many more people didn't lose their lives. What happened in Netanya was simply such an exaggeration and such an outrage: In the middle of the day, that Israel has to tell the Palestinians to please stop it. (Five Israelis died in a suicide bombing Friday in Netanya.)

Then again, the production of mortars, the shooting of shells into kibbutzim, into cities, and into towns -- the Palestinians, too, have to return to reason -- all of us.