Palestine Israeli Conflict Quotes

“Man, not the tank, shall prevail.”
― Adania Shibli, Minor Detail

“I think it was smart that you’re wary of using the word “terrorism,” and if you talk about the cycle of violence, or “an eye for an eye,” you could be perpetuating the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a balanced conflict, instead of a largely unarmed people against the fourth most powerful military in the world.”
― Rachel Corrie, My Name is Rachel Corrie

“I tell my story as well to let the Israeli people know that there is hope. If I, the son of a terrorist organization dedicated to the extinction of Israel, can reach a point where I not only learned to love the Jewish people but risked my life for them, there is a light of hope.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“The fact is, few Westerners can come close to understanding the complexities of the Middle East and its people.”
― Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices

“I summarize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as two peaceful peoples who form the majority, caught in the crossfire between extremists who are the minority—each dreaming of annihilating the other they call enemy and danger, and extending their control from the water to the water, fueled by hate, revenge and anger.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“Planet Palestine (Sonnet 1503)

Whole world is my promised land,
Which part will you invade!
When the entire planet is Palestine,
It is Israel that will fade.

Gone are the days of unchallenged tyranny,
Gone are the days of exploiting native trust.
In the past you got away with many Rushmores;
Try it today, you'll end up another Liz Truss.

You can have your puny guns and bombs,
I have an arsenal far mightier than thee.
Colonial apes may fund your homicidalism,
I have the entire humankind backing me.

When governments are on one side,
and humankind on the other,
that's the first sign of democracy,
and curtain call for the occupier.

We the people promise our planet to Palestine.
What'll you do now - call us all anti-semite!”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“But what choice does it have? As long as Israel is perceived by its enemies to be vulnerable, many Arabs and radical Muslims will continue to make Israelis kill them... When Israeli soldiers kill Arabs by accident, they mourn—and it causes psychological damage to those soldiers, and to all of Israeli society. The wars the Arab states have instigated are bloody and cruel, and a heavy price is paid by Israel, even when it wins. And win it must, because one loss means the loss of Israel.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“The region was a veritable postage stamp, on which contemporary rivalries -- territorial, religious, and political -- predated the Great Powers' division of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, a carve-up that was based entirely on Western interests. Later, what had been historic Palestine became Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Israel now controlled swathes of territory previously held by Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.”
― Paul McGeough, اقتل خالد: عملية الموساد الفاشلة لاغتيال خالد مشعل وصعود حماس

“No matter the cause, no civilian must die, that is my one unimpeachable law. But the hard and horrific fact of the matter is, only the occupier can put an end to the death and destruction peacefully - the resistance does not have that luxury.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“Aún recuerdo una violenta discusión entre mi padre y un sionista que había venido a recaudar dinero para Israel. Mi padre aborrecía el sionismo. Esa sola idea le parecía demencial. A su juicio, era tan absurdo reclamar Palestina después de dos mil años como lo habría sido que los italianos reclamaran Alemania porque en otra época la habían ocupado los romanos. Eso sólo podría desembocar en una matanza interminable y los judíos deberían combatir a todo el mundo árabe.”
― Fred Uhlman, Reunion

“Ultimately, if the Israeli-Palestinian problem cannot be solved without risking Israel’s demise, then the problem, as viewed with conventional wisdom, and taking into account current international constraints, cannot be successfully solved.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“If Israel defends itself too fully from people who joyfully wish it harm—people who behead others as a negotiating tactic—the world will choke Israel economically. If they don’t defend vigorously enough, more of its citizens get killed. The world has imposed the Vietnam standard on Israel: it isn’t currently allowed to end local terrorism by winning! And so, there will be a next war”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“Why does one society sing for peace, while another sings to glorify hate and killing? This cannot be the road to peace.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“This man at the pinnacle of Islam had this to say about 9/11.
“Our enemies weave many lies about us, which we are not necessarily aware of. For example: One day, we awoke to the crime of 9/11, which hit the tallest buildings in New York, the Empire State Building (sic). There is no doubt that not a single Arab or Muslim had anything to do with these events. The incident was fabricated as a pretext to attack Islam and Muslims... - and Allah knows that the Arabs and Muslims are innocent of it – in order to serve as a pretext to attack Islam and the Muslims... I believe a dirty Zionist hand carried out this act. Zionism has taken the opportunity to escalate the war in Palestine, killing hundreds of thousands so far, while we watch from the sidelines in astonishment and ask: What's going on?'?”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“Israel must not be larger just to be larger. It must be larger to be economically self-sustaining. It must be larger so that it is strong enough to win political allies. It must be larger so that it will be in a better position to do more good for more people throughout the world.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“The notion that all problems in the Middle East flow from Palestinian oppression, that Palestinian oppression flows from Israel’s occupation of “Palestinian lands,” and that if the occupation were ended, all problems in the Middle East would end, is false.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“One could argue that enlarging Israel is fair because Jordan illegally uprooted the Jews from the area that they are now resettling, even though international bodies call foul on
the Jews for doing so. One could argue that enlarging Israel is fair because 850,000 Jews were thrown out of Arab countries in the mid 20" century, in a grand ethnic cleansing enterprise. One could argue that enlarging Israel is fair because Hitler wiped out six out of every seven Jewish Europeans, and that
it is fair that Jews be allowed a decent sized piece of the earth to repopulate. Some would even argue that enlarging Israel is fair because of Israel’s biblical claim. Fairness, however, is not widely seen as a benefit to the world.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“True peace and true stability in the Middle East will only come when Israel’s enemies realize that they cannot destroy Israel by any means. For this to happen, Israel must be viable, and to be viable it must be larger. The sooner the international community understands that it must participate in making Israel viable in every respect, the sooner there will be peace.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“literally. They suffer little international wrath for their crimes against civilians—civilians oftentimes in their midst to lend a helping hand. Israel does not enjoy the same luxury. Most of the free press in the Middle East operates out of Jerusalem. This makes sense since Israel is the only democracy in the region. Only in Israel can the press freely operate. It is easier and much safer for a journalist to question Israel than to challenge any other entity in the region.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“Jews are painted by the brush strokes of thousands of years of persecution. Repeatedly reminding the world of the pogroms and the holocaust is both tiresome and has worn thin. But these atrocities are worth remembering. For when Arab fanatics and radical Muslims call for all Muslims to fulfill their duty to kill all Jews wherever they may be found, they are talking about each and every Jew, everywhere, and they are not joking. They are deadly serious.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“Palestinians have learned to use civilians as both swords and shields: they target Israeli civilians, then hide behind Palestinian civilians when the Israeli military comes after them...They deliberately place their bomb-making factories adjacent to schools, hospitals, and other civilian buildings.” “To reward rejection and violence with even-handedness is to encourage such conduct. There must be a high price paid by those who reject peace in favor violence, as the Palestinians have done since the 1920s”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“What is important here is not to establish the exact size of a future Israel, but rather to refocus the international debate away from how to implement an unworkable two state
solution within the confines of Israel and the territories and toward a debate about the size Israel should be to be a self-sustaining, viable state.”
― David Naggar, The Case for a Larger Israel

“الإنسان الغربي حوَّل نفسه إلى إلهٍ يسخِّر بقية العالم لصالحة، والصهاينة لا يختلفون عن ذلك؛ فهُم قد حوَّلوا فلسطين إلى مادة استعمالية، مجرد أرض يستوطنون فيها، وحولوا يهود العالم إلى مادة استعمالية تَنقل من أوطانها إلى إسرائيل، ثم حوَّلوا الفلسطينيين إلى مادة استعمالية تنقل خارجها.”
― عبد الوهاب المسيري, الصهيونية واليهودية

“Palestine is the new Poland.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Little Planet on The Prairie: Dunya Benim, Sorumluluk Benim

“Occupation has no place in a civilized society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“Ik ben twintig nu. Ik wil blij zijn en genieten van het leven. Maar hoe kan ik gelukkig zijn terwijl mijn land vermoord wordt? Zelfs als je niet dood bent, zoals ik, ben je het als Palestijn wel, vanbinnen. Dus praat me niet over vrede die geen vrede is.”
― Erik Wouters, Malak

“Mijn vader rookt veel. Heel veel.
'Je rookt te veel', zeg ik tegen hem. 'Je rookt je nog dood.' 'Ik ga nooit dood,' antwoordt hij.”
― Erik Wouters, Malak

“Het is zomer. We vieren Eid al-Fitr, het Suikerfeest, zonder baba.
Het is de eerste keer dat ik me echt eenzaam voel in mijn ei-gen land. Niet alleen omdat baba er niet is. Ik weet dat hij veilig is in België en daar een nieuw en beter leven voor ons zoekt.

Ik voel me eenzaam omdat ik voel en zie dat mama verdrietig is en omdat ze er niet over praat.
Ik voel me eenzaam omdat mijn broers, en zeker de kleine Yasmina, uitkijken naar het Suikerfeest. Soms denk ik dat zij baba niet missen, maar ik weet dat het geen echt feest zal zijn zonder hem.”
― Erik Wouters, Malak

“if your own proposal isn’t going to be attractive to you when it comes from the other side, what chance is there that the other side’s proposal is going to be attractive when it actually comes from the other side? (quoted by Tavris / Aronson)”
― Lee Ross

“Malkiel often considered telling his father about her. But Elhanan would have taken it badly. He would have cried “What? You, a Jew, with a Muslim woman? I'm sure she hates Israel….” And indeed she did. Leila, a future follower of the PLO, was already anti-Israel. Between her and Malkiel, argument followed endless and sometimes violent argument. Yes, yes, Israel has suffered, she would say; but does that give them the right to make Palestinians suffer?

Malkiel: You know very well it isn't Israel making them suffer! You can blame the Arab governments for their tragedy; why did they exhort them to flee their homes in 1948? And then let them live in refugee camps?

Leila: You Jews did all you could to uproot those people and drive them from their land, and now you blame the Arabs? If you hadn't come along, there would have been no tragedy!

He: We didn't come along, We came back. Easy enough for you to forget!

She: I'm not forgetting anything, but you forget that the Palestinians have been living on that land for centuries, and you abandoned it two thousand years ago!

Malkia lost his temper: Abandoned? You dare say we abandoned the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? And shown to Moses? And conquered by Joshua? Aren't you ashamed to falsify history? They expelled us from that land, but we never repudiated it, or forgot it, or abandoned it! Since King David there have always been Jews in Jerusalem, and Galilee, and Gaza.

She: Oh yes? And the big cities?

He: The big cities? Do you mean Haifa, Netanya and Tel Aviv? Do you want to tell me who built them? You, maybe? You were a smattering of people in the desert—do you dare deny that?

She: That's the Afrikaner argument in South Africa.

He: I forbid you to compare us to those racists and their apartheid! Racism and Judaism are incompatible! We suffered too much from racism to use it against others.

She: There you go again with your suffering! As if you were the only people who ever knew hardship!”
― Elie Wiesel, The Forgotten