Palestine Israeli Conflict Quotes & Sayings

All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of the Mediterranean littoral (god having apparently ordered Moses to lead the Jews to one of the very few parts of the region with absolutely no oil at all), that would be bad enough. But in addition, it involved roosting on top of an ever-growing population that did not welcome the newcomers. — Christopher Hitchens

I always have believed that we should not call it an Arab-Israeli issue or a Palestinian-Arab dispute or a peace negotiation. I think we should call it what it is: an occupation of Palestine, full stop. This is not a popular position in mixed company. — Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

For if life had taught her anything, it was that healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed. — Susan Abulhawa

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country. — Thomas Sowell

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

If every single Jew born anywhere in the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen, then all the Palestinians who were chucked out of Palestine by the Zionist Government should have the same right, very simple. — Tariq Ali

Give without expectation and receive with reckless abandon. — Colleen Mariotti

I had to do that. At least once. — Suzanne Collins

The key with blogging is to lay it all out there because sooner or later people are going to know what you know, so might as well be the first one to share the information and get credit for it. — Neil Patel

One of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65] — Anne Lamott

Joss's ears perked up. He loved libraries. Nowhere else in the world felt so safe and homey. Nowhere else smelled like books and dust and happy solitude quite like a library did. — Heather Brewer

The scariest thing for non-Jewish Americans in talking about Palestinian self-determination is the fear of being or sounding anti-Semitic. The people of Israel are suffering, and Jewish people have a long history of oppression. We still have some responsibility for that, but I think it's important to draw a firm distinction between the policies of Israel, as a state, and Jewish people. That's kind of a no-brainer, but there is very strong pressure to conflate the two. — Rachel Corrie

Dr. Shammaa's story was a dreadful one and her voice
broke as she told it. "I had to take the babies and put them
in buckets of water to put out the flames," she said. "When
I took them out half an hour later, they were still burning.
Even in the mortuary, they smouldered for hours." Next
morning, Amal Shammaa took the tiny corpses out of the
mortuary for burial. To her horror, they again burst into
flames. — Susan Abulhawa

You're Ma's own blood son, but did she take on that time Tony Fontaine shot you in the leg? No, she just sent for old Doc Fontaine to dress it and asked the doctor what ailed Tony's aim. Said she guessed the licker was spoiling his marksmanship. — Margaret Mitchell

Just a little piece of peace can cultivate the land of Palestine, but inhuman human won't let it do that ... — Munia Khan

I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots - written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements - and found that they called themselves Gush Emunim or - it sounded just as bad in English - 'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they took the land because god had given it to them from time immemorial. In the noisome town of Hebron, where all of life is focused on a supposedly sacred boneyard in a dank local cave, one of the world's less pretty sights is that of supposed yeshivah students toting submachine guns and humbling the Arab inhabitants. When I asked one of these charmers where he got his legal authority to be a squatter, he flung his hand, index finger outstretched, toward the sky. — Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes the events meant to destroy you are the conditions that bring you to life. — Joshua Viola

But in our camp, his story was everyone's story, a single tale of dispossession, of being stripped to the bones of one's humanity, of being dumped like rubbish into refugee camps unfit for rats. Of being left without rights, home, or nation while the world turned its back to watch or cheer the jubilation of the usurpers proclaiming a new state they called Israel. — Susan Abulhawa

We were
existing somewhere between life and death, with neither accepting us
fully. — Susan Abulhawa

The criticisms that are often presented to us by some in the conservative Jewish community about our Palestinian version are: first, that the U.S. is not in conflict with "Palestine" (quotes are theirs) and second, that Conflict Kitchen should counter the Palestinian viewpoints it presents with pro-Israeli viewpoints, otherwise we are spreading dangerous propaganda. — Jon Rubin

Meditation, you know, comes by a process imagination. You go through all these processes purification of the elements - making the one melt the other, that into the next higher, that into mind, that into spirit, and then you are spirit. — Swami Vivekananda

Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it. And even then your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and of course, the fact that I have the option to leave. I am allowed to see the ocean. — Rachel Corrie

The covetous man is like a camel with a great hunch on his back; heaven's gate must be made Higher and broader, or he will hardly get in. — Thomas Adams

They had bombed and burned,killed and maimed,plundered and looted.Now they had come to claim the land. — Susan Abulhawa

Humanity has determined it is supreme in the kingdom of animals, yet [the] beasts live a less tragic existence ... and many of their tragedies are a consequence of so-called human brilliance. — T.F. Hodge

If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's already been agreed even by the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky that the whole scheme is unrealizable in 'Judaea and Samaria,' let alone in Gaza or Sinai. But it's flat-out intolerable to be solicited to endorse a side-by-side Palestinian homeland and then to discover that there are sinuous two-faced apologists explaining away the suicide-murder of Jewish civilians in Tel Aviv, a city which would be part of a Jewish state or community under any conceivable 'solution.' There's that word again ... — Christopher Hitchens

I studied her face as she got closer. Who wore that much makeup this early in the morning? She looked like she got smacked in the face by a drunk rainbow. — Beth Ehemann

It is human nature to seek revenge in the face of relentless suffering. You can't expect an unhealthy person to think logically. — Izzeldin Abuelaish

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation. — Susan Abulhawa

When my father was growing up inside the Old City of Jerusalem, he and his friends liked to trade desserts after diner. — Naomi Shibab Nye

Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it. — Voltaire

He took in a premeditated breath, closed his eyes, and exhaled into the nye at his lips, playing a new tune.
It was not the sad music of waiting. Nor
was it a melody of his heritage. It was a call to the earth. To Allah. To
the country within him. — Susan Abulhawa

Actually - and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable - some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan - 'a land without a people for a people without a land' - disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea? — Christopher Hitchens

Blood is everywhere..
Vultures take shelter beneath the tanks;
for the fumed sky is unsafe for their avian flight to prey on the Palestinian flesh. — Munia Khan

A policy of peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine is the foundation of the tower, which will be built for the future; and visible from afar, the tower will be a non-violent symbol forever lasting peace. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

After finishing a good book, it was sometimes days before she could shake off that other reality; the one she'd dipped into, leaving the characters with whom she had bonded so tightly. She always grieved when she finished a novel. Knowing this would happen created a conflict in her, a desire to complete the story, read the whole thing and a hesitation to have it end; certain she would feel the loss she always experienced. — Ann Sutherland