Top 44 Gaza Quotes

In my 20 years as a photographer, covering conflicts from Bosnia to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan, injured civilians and soldiers have passed through my life many times.

Any Israeli attack on Lebanon, Iran, Syria or Gaza will be met with a fierce response.

I don’t think Hamas will be satisfied simply ruling the Gaza Strip.

One way or another, Gaza’s residents must live in peace with Israel.

The situation in the West Bank and Gaza involves a military occupation amid urban guerrilla warfare, analogous to the British security measures in Northern Island, that hopefully will end with a cease-fire.

The reason for the blockade on Gaza was not to punish the Palestinians but to continue to delegitimize Hamas.

I went to Iraq because I wanted to see what one year of occupation had done to Iraqi society, and I went to the West Bank and Gaza Strip because I wanted to see what three generations of occupation had done to Palestinian society. I found a lot more hopelessness and despair in Palestine.

Stopping all the violent and hostile actions means ending the smuggling of arms into the Gaza territory.

Needless to say, if the Arab-Israeli conflict is about interstate disputes and the need to resolve the future of the West Bank and Gaza, it can be solved; if it is a religious conflict, nothing but violence is ahead.

The actions of the terrorist organizations, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Hamas, in Gaza, against Israel are unconscionable. Instead of working towards peace, these terrorist organizations have chosen to perpetuate the violence.

I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza.

Each time there is a conflict between Israel and Gaza, accusations fly over who started it, each side blaming the other.

I spent my whole childhood being told, ‘Israel is surrounded by enemies who are trying to push it into the sea.’ But can’t Gaza feel the same way? Personally, I’m frozen in time.

Opening Iran up to foreign investment, increasing its oil exports, and unfreezing over $100 billion in assets means more money for Hamas for building terror tunnels in Gaza, more weapons for Hezbollah in Lebanon, more slaughter in Syria, and more violence worldwide.

What I really – and I would like to clarify my position, to topple Hamas. And I think it’s possible to bring reasonable people, moderate people to take power in Gaza Strip.

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.

The one thing that I’m absolutely sure about is that the people of Gaza aren’t going anywhere. And neither are the people of Israel.

Israel will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel left there.

If the withdrawal from Gaza goes badly, obviously, that will set us back.

My guide had a copy of Palestine on my last trip to Gaza. He’d bring it out and show people what I was trying to do. That usually went over pretty well.

Several hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs live in slums known as refugee camps in Gaza, Judea, and Somalia. Attempts by Israel to rehabilitate and oust them have been defeated by Arab objections. Nor has their fate been any better in Arab states.

The Israelis are very smart about politics and strategy, but there are a few exceptions. One is Lebanon, the other is Gaza, where they were completely inept.

Based on the Gaza precedent, Israel should not simply be expected to withdraw from territory and let it devolve into a state of anarchy. The West Bank is simply too close to Israel’s major population centers and infrastructure to allow it to become another launching pad for rockets.

Let the Palestinians run their affairs: create a situation in which no Israeli soldier will have to maintain public order, whether in Gaza or the West Bank. Let’s give it to the Palestinians, as long as there is security for us. No more occupying another people.

Hamas thinks they can kill the will of people by intimidation. Most of those who are killed in the Gaza Strip for the suspicion of collaborating with Israel, have nothing to do with Israel.

In Israel, we are sorry for the loss of life of Turkish citizens in May 2010, when Israel confronted a provocative flotilla of ships bound for Gaza. I am sure that the proper way to express these sentiments to the Turkish government and the Turkish people can be found.

We need to expose the lies and educate the Palestinian public that Israel is not the enemy. Israel actually helps the people of Gaza more than anybody else. We need the average Palestinian to see this clearly.

One of the biggest problems that Egypt faces is the lack of border security – the importation of weapons on their way to Gaza, for example, coming out of Sudan.

Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty, and no freedom of speech or press.

I never thought I would go to Gaza. It’s incredibly difficult to get into, and when you get there, it’s a war zone. Then they have this beach, and there’s this incredible, vibrant beach culture there, which is something that I grew up with in Southern California.

For a journalist working in Gaza or the Occupied Territories, a PRESS badge offers limited protection at best. For a Palestinian journalist, it clearly offers none at all.

The people of Gaza are trapped. Israel has sealed the border, and they have no way to leave the Gaza Strip to do business.

Americans are connected to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel because, generally speaking, Jewish Americans were always there, and many American Jewish people connect their nationality to the Israeli one.

There is a feeling among the Arabs – encouraging terrorist activity is part of the broad new Arab strategy – that sooner or later, Israel will be forced to withdraw from Samaria, Judea and Gaza.

Obviously this is the world descending into worse and worse standards of targeting civilians both in state violence in Iraq, Gaza and so on and the terrorist retaliation.

The state of Israel, and a government under me, will make it a strategic objective to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza. The means for doing this should be military, economic, and diplomatic.

In November 2008, the day of the presidential election, Israeli military forces invaded Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants. Well, that was followed by a missile exchange for a couple of weeks in both directions.

Incitement and anti-Arab hatred increased significantly during the Gaza conflict.

From the U.S. point of view, negotiations are, in effect, a way for Israel to continue its policies of systematically taking over whatever it wants in the West Bank, maintaining the brutal siege on Gaza, separating Gaza from the West Bank and, of course, occupying the Syrian Golan heights, all with full U.S. support.

Palestinian violence is not a response to the capture of the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian nationalism’s roots are not so shallow.

Gaza itself is subject to constant aerial surveillance by drones and is rife with informers and collaborators with Israel.

When I negotiated the ceasefire in Gaza with President Morsi, he was, you know, very involved.

Since Hamas took over, nothing has happened that is good for Gaza. They keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. The problem is they have an ideological movement that considers Tel Aviv a settlement.

My fight-or-flight mechanism… had served me well in Gaza, in Afghanistan, and all the places I’d been.