I think it is absolutely inevitable that Palestinians will, and have to, have their own state.
My ideology is not connected to the Palestinians.
Doesn’t the world see the suffering of millions of Palestinians who have been living in exile around the world or in refugee camps for the past 60 years? No state, no home, no identity, no right to work. Doesn’t the world see this injustice?
I get messages from Palestinians and from Iranians… everyone is, like, the same.
Arafat’s whole life has been governed by struggle and a cause. Everything he has done as leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open, never close a door.
Tens of thousands have been killed or wounded by the Israeli army since 1967. During 2006, the number of Palestinians killed reached 650. Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel – about 40% of the male population.
As prime minister, I was the Israeli leader who walked the greatest distance in his offers to the Palestinians.
Hamas murders not only Israelis, but also Palestinians whose political stance is different from that which its group promotes; that is, its radical religious outlook in which Islam is the solution to the world’s problems.
Who can guarantee that if we allow the Palestinians to establish a state, we won’t find rockets there as well, half a mile from the airport or 10 miles from Tel Aviv?
What you have in the Middle East is tension not between Jews and Arabs, not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between the radical wing and the moderate people.
My view is to try and not demonize the Palestinians. I’m not denying that there are Palestinians who fire rockets and do terrible things; I know that that happens. But to get a fundamental solution, you have to have hope on both sides.
In the calculus of western interests, there is no suffering, whatever its scale, which cannot be justified. Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis are of little importance.
The Israeli government has proved over the past year its commitment to peace, both in words and deeds. By contrast, the Palestinians are posing preconditions for renewing the diplomatic process in a way they have not done over the course of 16 years.
The Palestinians have tried everything, and by God, it’s Israel’s governments that taught us that the only thing the Israelis appreciate is force.
Maintaining control indefinitely over millions of Palestinians will inevitably lead to a demographic nightmare and cannot be sustained if Israel is to remain true to its founding principles.
Any political process has to secure an improvement in the Palestinians’ quality of life and education. Attempts to bring about a political arrangement before securing peace to the Israelis and economic improvement for the Palestinians are likely to fail.
We must stay focused on the bilateral negotiations between the Palestinians and us.
It seems Palestinians can’t win. The language of peace negotiations has always been predicated on a representation that Palestinians are violent and that is why Israel behaves as it does.
Israel and the Palestinians had been at the table together for decades until the Obama/Mitchell/Rahm Emanuel decision to demand a total end to Israeli construction froze not the settlements but the diplomacy.
If there was genuine desire on the Israeli side, even without a solution, it would be possible to solve a large percentage of the problems between Israelis and Palestinians by means of simple statements from the Israelis.
There’s no deep bench there, Mahmoud Abbas is, I think, the best leader of the Palestinians we could field.
As long as there are no negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel is and will continue to be in a difficult situation.
Stability cannot occur without a Palestinian Spring through the full implementation of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination on their land.
Palestinians have had to live for a long time with the fact that Israelis had power over them in their everyday lives.
It’s for the Palestinians to decide who will lead them.
There is no way Israel will deal with the Palestinians if the Palestinians do not understand the suffering of the Jewish people.
I am keen and anxious for the safety of both the Jews and the Palestinians.
I think the Obama administration, whether it’s in his first term or second term, is totally committed to the search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and we greatly appreciate the president’s effort, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the first administration, now Secretary of State John Kerry.
The claim that Israel seeks to annihilate the Palestinians is simply a lie. Israel seeks to stop rocket attacks and tunnel invasions, and as long as Hamas is dedicated to those actions, they can expect a forceful Israeli reaction.
Arab youth are taught to wonder, ‘Since the Holocaust was a European affair, why are the Palestinians being forced to pay for the creation of Israel?’
I don’t feel we need a declaration from the Palestinians that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The Palestinians need more help from the Arab countries. Since 1967, the world has learned that there is not going to be real progress in the region until Palestine gets something back that they had.
Obama wants to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the same thing we want.
It makes me very sad. Everyone’s afraid of each other – Jews are afraid of Palestinians, Palestinians are afraid of Jews. Everywhere I see fear, not understanding. Reason went out of the window a long time ago.
Palestinian children deserve the same right to be free in their own land as Israeli children in their land. A two-state solution will finally bring Israelis the security and normalcy to which they are entitled, and Palestinians the sovereignty and dignity they deserve.
It sometimes seems that the only plan the Israeli government has for the Palestinians is for them to sit quietly while Israel does whatever takes its fancy, equipped with its army, with laws it promulgated, and with courts it established.
What kind of people will these ghettos of Palestinians produce? What form of morality, national consciousness and hope will people be left with after so many years of stifling occupation and a sense of hopelessness?
The Palestinians will never, never implement their commitment to dismantle their infrastructure of terrorist organizations.
I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don’t understand what is going on.
Israelis and Palestinians are suspicious of each other and of promises from outside. But the need for a negotiated solution between the parties should not stymie international clarity and consensus about the endgame in terms of borders and other issues.
Much of what has gone wrong in the pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace is due to a lack of strong leadership, primarily among the Palestinians.
For decades, the plight of the Palestinian people has been exacerbated by internal corruption, a lack of effective investment, and the political cynicism of the Arab states, who often did not have the best interests of the Palestinians at heart.
Yesh Atid is a Jewish, religious-secular party. Our DNA is center – both Left and Right. The difference between center-left and center-right is more emotional and hereditary than having to do with what people think about the Palestinians.
The Palestinians are not willing to do anything, they’re not willing to make the strategic decision to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorist organizations.
I have written about the dispossessed, immigrants, the condition of women who do not enjoy the same legal rights as men, the Palestinians who are deprived of their land and condemned to exile.
I hope that France – and all of Europe – we would take an initiative for the year 2012 to be the year of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
I wrote that President Bush is passing on to President-elect Obama two wars and an economic debacle. I call it a depression. And he is arming Israel against the Palestinians in every way in Gaza.
Everyone assumes America must play the leading role in crafting some settlement or compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But Jefferson, Madison, and Washington explicitly warned against involving ourselves in foreign conflicts.
If Israel does not find the way to disengage from the Palestinians, its future might resemble the experience of Belfast or Bosnia – two communities bleeding each other to death for generations.
We have no desire to permanently rule over millions of Palestinians, who double their numbers every generation. Israel, which wishes to be an exemplary democracy, will not be able to bear such a reality over time. The Disengagement Plan presents the possibility of opening a gate to a different reality.
There are many Palestinians who believe there is no way to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. They call for the right of the return of refugees to Israel – something which is unacceptable for the consensus in Israel and which strikes at the very heart of this issue.
The establishment of Israel was accompanied by much pain and suffering and a real trauma for the Palestinians.
