Tzipi Livni Quotes

How do you negotiate a two state solution with the Palestinians when they do not believe that one of the states has the right to exist?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netyanahu made it real clear. They're willing to be generous on some other concessions but not on the border issue. And I don't blame him.

President George W. Bush is the first American president to call openly for two-states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.

I have no doubts, by the way, that Ariel Sharon really wants to move the peace process forward.

We do not build new Jewish communities in Samaria, Judea and Gaza. The United States has never accepted our building of communities or of the fence. Yet, I've managed to develop relations between Israel and the United States even though President Bush never supported settlements.

I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy.

The project to settle Palestinians here will be never be approved during my tenure regardless of the price.

The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council.

Israel never meant to take over the West Bank and Gaza - it got stuck with them after the 1967 war.

I think the Barack Obama position and the majority position of American Jews and a lot of Americans is a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. Settlements get in the way of that. If they're not stopped soon, there is no prospect for that type of solution.

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.

I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered.

But the leaders of the OIC could not even accept Mahathir's proposal, yet they talk about respect and honour.

I don't know where Bush is going - yet. But, Sharon obviously - I wrote somewhere in the last several months, that Sharon has adopted, essentially, the position of the Labor Party: that the Palestinians are here to stay.

Wishful thinking won't make the Palestinians an Israeli peace partner, no matter how much President Barack Obama pressures Israel to make concessions; caustically mocking Putin's worldview won't make it any less real or mitigate the Russian threat.

It is the hope of the European Union that Ariel Sharon will keep the peace process alive and continue the dialogue according to the wishes of all the parties involved.

The dissolution of the Oslo Accords would serve as the official act validating what we already know - that this failed framework is totally irrelevant in 2013.

And if we are honest we have to make a distinction between a democratic Israel that wants to live in peace and the terrorists who want Israel wiped out. The Israelis were told to give up land for peace; they gave up the land, but got no peace.

I hope that France - and all of Europe - we would take an initiative for the year 2012 to be the year of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine.

Israel and the Palestinians had been at the table together for decades until the Obama/Mitchell/Rahm Emanuel decision to demand a total end to Israeli construction froze not the settlements but the diplomacy.

War is often about making the least-worst decision. The same could be said about politics. But the stakes are higher in war, when the commander-in-chief is called upon to defend the nation.

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.

Everyone assumes America must play the leading role in crafting some settlement or compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But Jefferson, Madison, and Washington explicitly warned against involving ourselves in foreign conflicts.

The Israeli people are skeptical about the chances of a long-term peace, but if they saw it, they'd grab it. Any Israeli government that wants to be reelected should be interested in a lasting peace.