Arab Israeli Quotes

The representative of the Jewish Agency [for Palestine] told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world we were going to fight [against an independent Israel].

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.

Israel does not need to resort to provocation [to have a war to bring down Abdul Nasser. Egypt itself supplies the provocations, continuously.

What I, as the prime minister of the present government of Israel, started to do, is first to tackle the longest part of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Before statehood was achieved, Syria and Egypt had their tanks and military equipment lined up to invade Tel Aviv and destroy it; but the Israelis scrambled together an air force, some of it from old Second World War Messerschmidts, and the invasion was halted.

Arab Israelis don't have the same voice as Jewish Israelis. If you look at the numbers, we are not equal. There are many reasons for this, some have to do with the fact that we are a bit primitive in the way we do certain things, others have to do with the government not giving us the same opportunities as Jews.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is the biggest problem, but small problems shape the daily lives of Israelis. Unless there happens to be a war going on, the Arab-Israeli conflict is irrelevant in daily life.

We may be delighted to see Israel putting the Arabs in their place, but we have repeatedly condemned their occupation of Arab territory.

Terrorism benefits the Arabs, it may lay waste the Yishuv and shake Zionism. But to follow in the Arabs' footsteps and ape their deeds is to be blind to the gulf between us. Our aims and theirs run counter: methods calculated to further theirs, are ruinous to us.

For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.

In my essays and articles I have been saying again and again that the case of Israel and Palestine, the case of Israel and the Arab world, and indeed the case of Israel and Europe, is not black and white. It's not a western movie.