A Quote by Ehud Barak
The Arab leaders, they don't have a love affair with the Palestinians or the Palestinian leadership, but the publics have, and they cannot feel safe in their own chairs if they accept Israel, the mistress, so to speak, to acknowledge her as a main, the Unter den Linden, the main road, as long as we are not moving forward with the Palestinians.
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It's possible a Palestinian state will be installed over the heads of the Palestinians. It could be part of an agreement between the Israeli government and moderate Arab states, but not one between Israel and the Palestinians.
For the Palestinians' efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.
The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism.
The US and Israel have demanded further that Palestinians not only recognize Israel's rights as a state in the international system, but that they also recognize Israel's abstract right to exist, a concept that has no place in international law or diplomacy, and a right claimed by no one. In effect, the US and Israel are demanding that Palestinians . . . formally accept the legitimacy of their expulsion from their own land. They cannot be expected to accept that, just as Mexico does not grant the US the right to exist on half of Mexico's territory, gained by conquest.
No matter how Palestinians resist, they are shot, beaten, arrested, tortured, bombed, segregated, and collectively punished. The problem isn't the mode of Palestinian resistance, it is the existence of Palestinians on their land that Israel takes issue with.
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?'
The main aim of the Palestinians is to destroy the state of Israel.
I don't want to involve myself in the various arguments about why Israel was created . . . . . I want to deal with the situation at hand which is the ongoing killing on both sides. . . . . . . It's true that there's also much oppression of Palestinians in Arab countries, where Palestinians aren't allowed to vote or own property and are treated as second class citizens and pawns in the fight against Israel. But I'm not going to spend my time on this since there is isn't a whole lot I can do about it.
Palestinians have been banned since forever. And nobody - and it's an unhuman act, and it's a - for me, it's a crime issue. So, nobody has punished Israel ever since they were banning Palestinians. And so, Israel right now feels the power that they can just move on with it, and now they are trying to ban other people that are not Palestinians.
Some Israeli politicians have proposed the transfer of Palestinians out of what is currently called Israel, either into the occupied territories, into Jordan or out into other Arab lands, with the idea that there would be no intermixing of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis or Palestinian and Jewish communities. But the idea of an absolute segregation is one that I find lamentable.
You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation - to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians.
I believe that in the long run, separation between Israel and the Palestinians is the best solution for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Some friends of Israel believe that the Palestinians will never, in their hearts, accept a Jewish state in Palestine. Yet Germans and French, Chinese and Japanese, Mexicans and Americans have overcome their once insurmountable differences. Palestinians and Jews also have much to gain from peaceful coexistence.
Toward the Palestinians, Israel can only give. But when dealing with the entire Arab world, Israel can get a lot.
It is in Israel's interest not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state.
The Arabs could have peace tomorrow if sufficient numbers of Palestinians were not content to be used as cannon fodder in fruitless assaults on Israel, even as the surrounding Arab powers distract the Arab masses with the red herring of Israel while retarding their countries with their repression and corruption.
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