Barack Obama Quotes

I have reached a conclusion that when we have to make a choice between greater Israel or a Jewish democratic state - and we have to make this choice, it is inevitable - then my choice is a Jewish democratic country.

We're saying this to both countries: We want a two-state solution. We want a Jewish state of Israel and alongside a independent Palestinian state. Unilateral measures are not helping at all to bring about this cause, and we agree that we wish to cooperate very closely on this, because as we both say, time is of the essence.

I think that peace will require two states, a Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.

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?

The future of Israel has been a key bipartisan concern for generations of Americans, and it is almost axiomatic that if the Palestinians have no viable future, neither does Israel.

There is nowhere I encounter greater understanding for Israel's existential issues than in the Oval Office.

Any agreement that will strengthen Israel - the Kulanu party will be there to support it.

Sooner or later, Israel will have to defeat Hamas. There is no way around it.

While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines...

There is no consensus in Israel regarding the two-state formula. We will not, under any circumstances, allow the establishment of a neighboring state that will be a genuine threat on our existence.

It's not by accident that this has not been resolved in 50 years, but I believe this is the best chance we will have for a long time for there to be a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

A return to the 1967 lines and the abandonment of the settlements near Jerusalem would be such a psychological trauma for Israel as to endanger its survival.

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.

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.

America that has done more to support Israel than any other country cannot be true to our own values if we allow a viable two-state solution to be destroyed before our own eyes.

In the long term, Israel's security rests on only one pillar: the Palestinians' acceptance of the country. It isn't the atom bomb that makes Israel secure.

That's what I am standing up for - Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state living side-by-side in peace and security with its neighbors.

The P.L.O., and later the Palestinian Authority, never truly accepted that Israel, as the national state and homeland of the Jewish people, was here to stay.

The central premise behind Oslo was that if Arafat were given enough legitimacy, territory, weapons and money, he would use his power to fight terror and make peace with Israel.

The United States needs to be far clearer: we cannot and will not support any government where Hamas has a real influence and the security forces stop fighting terror.

The Palestinians want a state, but they have to give peace in return. What they're trying to do in the United Nations is to get a state without giving Israel peace or giving Israel peace and security. And I think that's, that's wrong. That should not succeed. That should, that should fail.

In the Bill Clinton years, the foreign leader who visited the White House most often was Yasser Arafat - 13 times.

I enter negotiations with Chairman Arafat, the leader of the PLO, the representative of the Palestinian people, with the purpose to have coexistence between our two entities, Israel as a Jewish state and Palestinian state, entity, next to us, living in peace.

The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state.

American foreign policy has been - and must continue to be - based on unequivocal support for Israel's right to exist and to be free from terror.