Hanan Ashrawi Quotes

No border that touches Israel is always secure.

Nothing is gained by military occupation. All occupations are failures.

Any state surrounded by enemies will seek strategic depth.

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.

Now that nation called Israel, never has had any peace in forty years and she will never have any peace because there can never be any peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name.

Being an occupier is not good for anybody's global standing. It is a catalyst for terrorist recruitment.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

Israel ranks her priorities in the following way: security, land, and water.

So I think we should stay focused on the real problem in the Middle East. It's not Israel. It's these dictatorships that are developing nuclear weapons with the specific goal of wiping Israel away.

I will continue to believe that Israel's security is paramount.

On the one hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is occupying another people. On the other hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is existentially threatened.

We cannot give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to other Arabs. Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy.

For Israel there is tension between our values and the brutal reality [of the Middle East]

Security is an underlining interest of Israel.

Syria is still the foundation of the axis of evil, and I'm not sure it's appropriate to transfer Israel's northern front to the axis of evil.

Israel's security is not negotiable for us; that is absolutely clear.

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?

In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission. The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can you really bomb feminism into a country? And now, after 25 years of brutal war - 10 years against the Soviet occupation, 15 years of US occupation - the Taliban is riding back to Kabul and will soon be back to doing business with the United States.

Israel will not discuss a peace involving the concession of any piece of territory. The neighboring states do not deserve an inch of Israel's land. . . . We are ready for exchange for peace.

The justification - the idea that we have a right to invade another country and determine another people's destiny - is frightening. And I fear really for the future of that occupation. What happens now, and twenty years from now, and forty years from now, given our case? People in the United States may feel like when we don't see it on CNN twenty-four hours a day, it sort of disappears. But it doesn't disappear for the people who have to live under occupation - and their children and their children's children.

Israel cannot continue to exist in an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity without threats and aggression. If this regime stays on one inch of Palestine’s soil, it will continue its threats.

Israel must be wiped off the map.

Desperate men do desperate things when you take hope away. And that's where the Palestinians are today.

You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine.

The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war.