Ariel Sharon Quotes
In this region declarations, speeches, words are worthless.
The “region” of course is the Middle East.
Ariel Sharon, 1928-2014, Israeli Prime Minister (Likud), Army General & Defense Minister, 2004
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impeachment of President Andrew Johnson Garfield was then a Congressman
A major issue amongst Israeli’s is to how they should relate to those hostile Islamic nations in their area who claim they are at war with Israel or the Jewish People. This position in effect says that the oratory of those Islamic groups that claim that they are in a war—a holy war even—should be taken at their word and treated as a wartime enemy and Israel should actively attempt to kill and destroy them.
With this statement, Sadat did what no Arab had ever dared to do—offer to negotiate with Israel. It led to the great peace breakthrough which produced the Arab-Israeli peace.
Israel had again been attacked by Arab armies and at the same time the parties were in peace negotiations. Some argued that there should be a cease fire while negotiations were ongoing, but Rabin explained that if the two did not go on simultaneously and independently, neither might go well.
The quotation was made in the context of the Arab Israeli conflict, but the principle is general.
This illustrates one of the reasons that the Israeli Arab conflict has been unsolvable over the years. A thousand years ago, the Arabs were a leading intellectual and military power in the world. The rest of the world has moved ahead and they have actually retrogressed. So the Arabs seek dignity which is very elusive. They have never wanted to negotiate terms with Israel when they have been weak and feel defeated. So the pattern has been that they feel they cannot negotiate for justice as they are too week. So periodically they attack Israel which has always defeated them and hoped that after the Arab defeat, permanent negotiations for peace could take place. But the Arabs were feeling too weak. So they just repeated all their extreme demands. After a few years, they would try another attack, lose again and the cycle would repeat. The Israelis fear that if the Arabs every won a war, the Arab moderates might be willing to reasonably negotiate, the extremists would want to continue the fighting and “drive the Israelis into the sea” as they have so often threatened.
Ariel Sharon was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.
