Saeb Erekat Quotes

Hamas has territorial ambitions on Israel. In fact, that’s putting it too mildly: it would like to replace Israel in its entirety with a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled state. Israel has no territorial ambitions on Hamas-ruled Gaza. To the contrary, Israel left it totally 13 years ago, with the hope of never having to return.

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.

Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank.

Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land.

Israel has obviously not liberated the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. We have occupied them, but we have not liberated them.

The world should commit Israel to withdraw from our territories and stop occupation and aggression, and allow the Palestinian people to establish their independent state.

I don't think there's going to be peace as long as Israel is occupying land that belongs to the Palestinians, to Lebanon and to Syria.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I hate Hamas. They embody everything that I, as a human being, am fighting against: oppression, religious rule, and patriarchy. They empower Israel while dividing the Palestinians.

When I visited Jerusalem and the West Bank back in 2008, I was shocked by how individual Palestinians and whole Palestinian communities were treated by the Israeli government. From the illegal settlements to daily humiliations at checkpoints, the evidence of gross injustice and the human suffering it brings is indisputable.

The term 'demilitarized Palestinian state' is an oxymoron.

If you put too much pressure on the Palestinian Authority, it will collapse - it will disappear - and Israel will have to formally re-occupy the West Bank and assume responsibility for the Palestinians there. The United States doesn't want that. Israel doesn't really want that.

What happens in Israel should be decided between Israel and the Palestinians.

Palestine isn't a state when it concerns statehood. When it comes to warring, it's a state, yes? The Palestinians, they live in a country, for the purpose of war.

Israel criticizes Hitler a lot, so do we, but they've done something very similar, even worse, than what the Nazis did.

There would be those of us who say that in many ways, you worry about what the Jews in Israel are doing to themselves. Yes, they may at the moment have incredible power and are supported almost unconditionally by especially America, but most of the West as well. Yet what they are doing is contrary to the best teaching and highest teachings of their faith.

I want to tell the United States, the international community and all those who speak about peace that... the shortest way for this is that they should work for halting the Israeli aggression and occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Everyone I knew, including my new friends in Jordan, expressed horror at the realities of the Holocaust. But they resented, as I was growing to, how Arabs were cast as the aggressors in the dispute between Israel and the Arab countries, when it was their land that had been seized to resolve a European political problem.

The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine.

Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime [in Israel] must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine... I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to have been overshadowed by the upheavals in the region. I have followed events there for almost 40 years. I am convinced that what is needed for a solution is not only the willingness to negotiate in good faith but also to take into account the needs and sensibility of the negotiating partner. I, for one, just cannot believe that the value of settlements for Israel is bigger than the damage these settlements do as an obstacle to peace.

So long as there is an Israeli occupation in Palestine and so long as U.S. policy is biased, the so-called terrorism that the United States fears will escalate because the mistakes of U.S. foreign policy are pouring oil on fire.

Israel is much worse than the original apartheid state.

It is Israel that must recognize Palestine's rights. We cannot believe in empty statements, twiddle our thumbs and watch our children getting killed. Israel must end occupation and aggression, and our actions won't take much longer after that.

We reject this illegal, barbarous, savage state that calls itself Israel. And you have to do the same.

A friend of mine is trying to do a documentary where he brings Jewish and Arab comedians to occupied territories in Israel. He wants to do shows as a way of finding some comedic common denominator. When he proposed the idea to one of the officials at the Jenin refuge camp, the guy just stared at him and said, "This is not a joke to us. We don't think that laughing is the answer."