 The most ambitious peace attempt between Palestinians and Israelis was made back in October 1993 when Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo peace accords and famously shook hands on the White House lawn. Clinton played the role as the peacemaker. © US Government |
Quotes
Arab leaders
I can certainly put myself in Israel's shoes. They are humans just like we are. They want peace and security inside their borders.
- Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.
- PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations.
- PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine.
- PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.
- PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
Whoever stands by a just cause cannot possibly be called a terrorist.
- PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
Whoever thinks of stopping the uprising before it achieves its goals, I will give him ten bullets in the chest.
- PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
And I'm as certain as I can be that if we were to say we'd give up the fight against the Israelis, that we would not retaliate if Israel attacks our country, then there's a very great possibility that Hezbollah would be dropped from the American list of terrorist organizations.
- Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah
However, there is no legal and legitimate state called Israel.
- Hezbollah Secretary GeneralHassan Nasrallah
I don't believe that - ever since the first day, I don't believe that Israel is a candidate for peace in this region.
- Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah
Israel remains a foreign body in this large area, and it always proved that it is unable to coexist with this environment, because the, the scope of the massacres that it has committed does not permit it to coexist.
- Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah
Israel, as the Jewish state, must disappear from the map.
- Co-founder and leader of Hamas Sheikh A. Yassin
The attacks inside Israel are operations we carry out in response to Israeli crimes against our people.
- Co-founder and leader of Hamas Sheikh A. Yassin
Jewish leaders
The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever.
- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin
If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...
- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, 2000
I would have joined a terrorist organization.
- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's response to Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Haaretz newspaper, when Barak was asked what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian.
We are dutybound to turn these places surrounding us - sacred to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism - into a bridge and a symbol of freedom of access and worship, coexistence in peace... under the sovereignty of Israel.
- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
Israel cannot afford to stand against the entire world and be denounced as the aggressor.
- Chief of Staff, IDF Moshe Dayan
Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world - the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism. David Ben Gurion In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion
In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion
We must expel Arabs and take their places.
- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, 1937
There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that.
- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion
Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.
- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, 1938
If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.
- Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion
Is Palestine or Argentine to be preferred? The Society will take what is given to it and what is selected by the public opinion of the Jewish people.
- Founder modern Zionism Theodor Herzl
My program, far more preferable, is to stop infiltration and concentrate all our strength upon an internationally-sanctioned acquisition of Palestine, To achieve this, we require diplomatic negotiations, which I have already begun, and propaganda on the largest scale.
- Founder modern Zionism Theodor Herzl
Zionism demands a publicly recognized and legally secured homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people. This platform is unchangeable.
- Founder modern Zionism Theodor Herzl
The banding together by the nations of the world against Israel is the guarantee that their time of destruction is near and the final redemption of the Jew at hand.
- Founder of Kach Meir Kahane
Surely it is time for Jews, worried over the huge growth of Arabs in Israel, to consider finishing the exchange of populations that began 35 years ago.
- Founder of Kach Meir Kahane
This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.
- Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, 1971
There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist.
- Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, 1969
How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.
- Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, 1969.
I think that a strong Israel is the only Israel that will bring the Arabs to the peace table.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
First of all, Arafat is wrong. Jerusalem is Israel's capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, the capital of the Jewish people, for ever and ever.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel has an important principle: It is only Israel that is responsible for our security.
- Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
The struggle to get weapons is continuous, but the United States will aid us, if it finds Israel displaying a willingness for peace.
- Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.
- Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, 1998.
Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them
- Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, 1998.
Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.
- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 2001
We have said that Israel has had a very bad history with the United Nations, and whoever cares for himself in Israel distances himself from that Organization.
- Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir
United States leaders
We will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the most important friends is the State of Israel. My administration will be steadfast in support Israel against terrorism and violence, and in seeking the peace for which all Israelis pray.
- US President George W. Bush
They said the United States policy is tilted toward Israel, and I said, Our policy is tilted toward peace.
- US President George W. Bush.
American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.
- US President Bill Clinton
Our forces saved the remnants of the Jewish people of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn land of Israel. Along with all men of good will, I salute the young state and wish it well.
- US President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.
- US president John F. Kennedy
Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know it. I believe that.
- US president Richard M. Nixon
There are many people in that part of the world who'd love to shove Israel into the sea, and not have it be there, and until people are willing to accept the presence of Israel, Israel obviously is not going to be able to make a deal.
- US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld