Palestinian Freedom Quotes

We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. ~ Nelson Mandela

Israel is one of the most multiracial and multicultural countries in the world. More than a hundred different countries are represented in its population of 6 million. Consider how the Israeli government spent tens of millions of dollars airlifting more than forty thousand black Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1984 and 1991. Since 2001 Israel has reached out to help others, taking in non-Jewish refugees from Lebanon, the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, Liberia, and Congo, and even Bosnian Muslims. How many such refugees have the twenty-two states in the Arab League taken in? The Arab world won't even give Palestinian refugees citizenship in their host countries. Remember, Jews can't live in the neighboring Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan or in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But Arabs are living as citizens in Israel. What does that tell you about their respect for other cultures? Over 1 million Arabs are full Israeli citizens. An Arab sits on the Supreme Court of Israel. There are Arab political parties expressing views inimical to the State of Israel sitting in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Women are equal partners in Israel and have complete human rights, as do gays and minorities. Show me an Arab nation with a Jew in its government. Show me an Arab country with half as many Jewish citizens as Israel has Arab citizens. Show me freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and human rights in any Arabic country in the Middle East the way they exist and are prac ~ Brigitte Gabriel

Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep. ~ Haruki Murakami

Palestinians are not victims in need of aid, they are an occupied & oppressed people in need of freedom. ~ Remi Kanazi

ref·u·gee noun: a person who flees for refuge or safety

We are, each of us, refugees
when we flee from burning buildings
into the arms of loving families.
When we flee from floods and earthquakes
to sleep on blue mats in community centres.
We are, each of us, refugees
when we flee from abusive relationships,
and shooters in cinemas
and shopping centres.

Sometimes it takes only a day
for our countries to persecute us
because of our creed, race, or sexual orientation.
Sometimes it takes only a minute
for the missiles to rain down
and leave our towns in ruin and destitution.

We are, each of us, refugees
longing for that amniotic tranquillity
dreaming of freedom and safety
when fences and barbed wires spring into walled gardens.

Lebanese, Sudanese, Libyan and Syrian,
Yemeni, Somali, Palestinian, and Ethiopian,
like our brothers and sisters,
we are, each of us, refugees.
The bombs fell in their cafés and squares
where once poetry, dancing, and laughter prevailed.
Only their olive trees remember music and merriment now
as their cities wail for departed children without a funeral.

We are, each of us, refugees.
Don't let stamped paper tell you differently.
We've been fleeing for centuries
because to stay means getting bullets in our heads
because to stay means being ~ Kamand Kojouri

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation. ~ Susan Abulhawa

I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. ~ Yasser Arafat

The movie [Miral] is not pro-Palestinian. It's about Palestinians. It's a Palestinian story, written by a Palestinian person. I don't know anybody else that could have done that ~ Julian Schnabel

We have to recognize that there is a Palestinian entity, that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority has to run their life. ~ Yitzhak Rabin

The important issue for us is bringing (people) who recognize the Palestinian people's rights and work on ending the occupation (to the Palestinian territories) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ~ Mohammed Dahlan

I will do everything in my power to prevent a Palestinian state ~ Naftali Bennett

There will be no Palestinian state ~ Max Blumenthal

We are pushing towards the dream of having our independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. If there is a real project that aims to resolve the Palestinian cause on establishing a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, under full Palestinian sovereignty, we will support it. ~ Ismail Haniyeh

The Israelis wanted to sabotage the Palestinian - Palestinian reconciliation. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

If the Palestinian Olympic Committee or Palestinian Federation provide good facilities to the athletes then maybe I can become better than these Bahraini or Qatari athletes. ~ Nader Al-Masri

God willing, we shall come to a stage where the world looks at the Palestinian question, and Palestinian rights on Palestinian national soil, as well as the questions of the occupied Syrian and Lebanese territories. These are the bases on which peace will be built. ~ King Hussein I

There is not going to be any pass for Palestinian leadership in fighting terror. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Because Freedom is the most important thing on life, let me Be. ~ John Steinbeck

How come a Palestinian child does not live like an Israeli child? Why do Palestinian children have to toil at any manner of hard jobs just to be able to go to school? How is it that when we are sick. we can't get the medical help the Israeli kids take for granted? ~ Izzeldin Abuelaish

Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity. ~ Zuheir Mohsen

I don't know something called International Principles. I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian childs existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. ~ Ariel Sharon

This isn't the Palestinian flag. Palestine isn't a country for it to have a flag. Palestine is a condition. Every Arab is a Palestinian. Every poor man who carries a gun is a Palestinian. Palestine is the condition of us all. ~ Elias Khoury

I think it was so unfair that people attacked Freida Pinto for being an Indian, playing a Palestinian. ~ Julian Schnabel

Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state. ~ Yasser Arafat

We can also reassure our Palestinian partners that we understand the importance of territorial contiguity in the West Bank for a viable Palestinian state. ~ Ariel Sharon

I hope that my new status will be an example of Israeli-Palestinian co-existence, I believe that the destinies of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are inextricably linked. ~ Daniel Barenboim

Resistance in Palestine will continue until the final liberation of all the Palestinian lands. ~ Ahmed Yassin

It's not that I place less value on Palestinian lives, but that Chairman Arafat and his chums in Hamas do. ~ Mark Steyn

Palestine is only a stones throw away for a small Palestinian boy or girl. ~ Yasser Arafat

Lose your freedom, and become a slave by borrowing. ~ Auliq Ice

I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

The Palestinian Rifle is ready and we will aim it if they try to prevent us from praying in Jerusalem. ~ Yasser Arafat

Referring to Palestinian refugees: We must do everything in our power to ensure that they never return. ~ David Ben-Gurion

The Palestinian mother is the author of the survival story of the Palestinian people. She is the heroine, the one behind the success. ~ Izzeldin Abuelaish

Today three-quarters of the Palestinian people are displaced: there are 5 million Palestinian refugees throughout the world. ~ Ismail Haniyeh

The problem is that when you grow absolutely certain that all authorities are corrupt, then that would include the Palestinian authorities as well. ~ Elia Suleiman

Palestinians are a hard-working and an incredible community. They have done remarkably well outside their country. I have never met a poor Palestinian in the United States; every Palestinian I know is a college professor or a doctor. ~ William J. Clinton

If there is willingness on the Palestinian side to reach an agreement, it is possible. We are conducting the negotiations with goodwill. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

It is wrong to say the U.S. should 'not take sides' in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. ~ Howard Berman

So long as our land is occupied it is the right of the Palestinian people and their factions to combine resistance and political activities. Resistance and its arms are directed against the occupation while political activity is part of re-arranging the Palestinian home. ~ Khaled Mashal

The Israelis are mistaken if they think we do not have an alternative to negotiations. By Allah I swear they are wrong. The Palestinian people are prepared to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl so that the Palestinian flag will be flown over the walls, the churches and the mosques of Jerusalem. ~ Yasser Arafat

There is no such thing as a Palestinian people ... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist. ~ Golda Meir

Just ten of the Jewish billionaires on this Earth have more than enough to transform the occupied territories into heaven. We can put the 'pal' back in Palestinian. ~ Roseanne Barr

The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home amongst compatriots ~ Nelson Mandela

Freedom is an ingredient of humble facts. ~ Arif Naseem

Russia can play an important role in removing the occupation, ending the aggression and achieving national (Palestinian) rights. ~ Khaled Mashal

Peace cannot come from punishing the Palestinian people. ~ Nick Rahall

As long as Palestinian violence exists, but not a Palestinian state, Israel is in danger, because it cannot obtain assistance from the international community against an entity that is not subordinate to international law. ~ Stephane Hessel

If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I'd eventually join one of the terrorist organizations. ~ Ehud Barak

I don't think there should be a Palestinian state because I don't believe in states. ~ Elia Suleiman

What Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories. ~ Yasser Arafat

Unless Hamas recognizes Israel's right to exist and renounces terror, the Palestinian Authority should receive no direct U.S. assistance. ~ Lois Capps

Not enough people know or understand just how little freedom we have left. ~ Korban Blake

If there will be a serious Palestinian prime minister who makes a 100 percent effort to end terrorism, then we can have peace. Each side has to take steps. If terror continues, there will not be an independent Palestinian state. Israel will not accept it, if terror continues. ~ Ariel Sharon

We [Libyans] support the Palestinian resistance, and all the world supports this. We support their just cause, but we are against terrorism. ~ Muammar Al-Gaddafi

I'm Palestinian, I'm disabled, I'm female and I live in New Jersey ... ~ Maysoon Zayid

We are here to condemn the Palestinian occupation of the territories, but also to condemn the recent racist attack in France, against both Jews and Arabs. ~ Jean-Claude Van Damme

The Palestinian people have no national identity.
I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel. ~ Yasser Arafat

A freedom given up is not so easily regained. ~ Rivera Sun

The Palestinian economy is, and will likely continue to be, highly reliant on trade. And yet, trade between the Palestinian Authority and the Arab states is extremely limited. ~ Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

There are two kinds of terrorism. Rational terrorism such as Palestinian terrorism and apocalyptic terrorism like Sept. 11. You have to distinguish between the two. ~ Alan Dershowitz

The victory of Hamas is not only based on the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has a vision and a program, and this is the reason why the Palestinian people chose Hamas. However, there is no doubt that the corruption helped Hamas's victory. ~ Ismail Haniyeh

The minute they become a partner in the Palestinian government, reality will become a lot more complicated for them than when they were a terror organization alone. ~ Avi Dichter

Palestinian society is filled with poetry, but not experimental poetry. The Palestinian poetry that people know is not the modernist experimentations, it's certain kinds of poetry that lends itself to recitation and song and things like that. ~ Elliott Colla

The land is ours": that is pretty much the end of the debate. "I will do everything in my power, forever, to fight against a Palestinian state being founded in the Land of Israel, ~ Naftali Bennett

The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine. ~ Yasser Arafat

The United States stands willing to work with a transformed Palestinian Authority with new leaders coming to the front. ~ Colin Powell

As the Palestinian leadership never seems to pay any penalty for its words, America's seriousness about the peace process is in doubt. ~ Elliott Abrams

Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours ... Everything we don't grab will go to them. ~ Ariel Sharon

Perhaps areas of Israel where current large Palestinian populations and demographic realities exist could be exchanged for Israeli expansion into the West Bank to include most of East Jerusalem. ~ Geraldo Rivera

The Palestinian refugee problem could have easily been solved in 1948, just as virtually every other refugee problem in the world has been; and just as the refugee problem of the 800,000 Jews who fled Arab countries during and after 1948 was solved. But, since 1948, Arab countries have deliberately mistreated the Palestinian refugees by refusing to integrate them into their countries and by keeping them in refugee camps - the only refugees in the world to be kept in camps for three generations. The Arab countries did this so as to keep the world's attention focused on the plight of the Palestinian refugees and to use them as a way to defame and ultimately, they hope, delegitimize and de-Judaize Israel. ~ Dennis Prager

Jordan recognizes that east Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state and Jordan rejects foreign sovereignty
Israeli sovereignty
over the holy sites ~ Yasser Arafat

Create inner freedom through witnessing. Sannyas is only for the inner freedom. And live out of inner freedom. ~ Rajneesh

Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today. ~ Os Guinness

Israel has gone mad. It's attacking, doing the same thing to the Palestinian and Lebanese people that they have criticised - and with reason - the Holocaust . But this is a new Holocaust. ~ Hugo Chavez

You can't pick and choose which types of freedom you want to defend. You must defend all of it or be against all of it. ~ Scott Howard Phillips

I'm a big advocate of freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought. ~ Jimmy Wales

I understand the sentiments of the Palestinians when they see the settlements being built. The meaning from the Palestinian perspective is that Israel takes more land, that the Palestinian state will be impossible, the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we'll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and cannot create the state. ~ Tzipi Livni

The goal of #BDS is the full restoration of Palestinian rights, not an agreement to create an artificial mini-state in order to save Zionism ~ Ali Abunimah

Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently. ~ Rosa Luxemburg

It was not the creation of 760,000 Arab-Palestinian refugees that has created this hatred. It was this hatred that created the refugees. Had six Arab armies not attacked Israel to destroy it in 1948, there would not have been any refugees. ~ Dennis Prager

Most people cannot handle freedom.
They are always trying to bind themselves, but only talking , mouthing freedom all the time because freedom needs courage , freedom needs a certain madness ~ Sadhguru

Economic freedom has no security without political freedom, and political freedom can find its security only in economic freedom. ~ Eugen Richter

Both during the elections and as Prime Minister, I have repeatedly and publicly said that I support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. ~ Ariel Sharon

I cannot recognise either the Palestinian state or the Israeli state. The Palestinians are idiots and the Israelis are idiots. ~ Muammar Al-Gaddafi

Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not be translated defacto into a policy of support for a really increasingly brutal repression, colonial settlements and a new wall. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

Israel reoccupied the cities of the West Bank by a unilateral action, and reestablished the civil and military occupation by a unilateral action, and it is the one that determines whether or not a Palestinian citizen has the right to reside in any part of the Palestinian Territory. ~ Mahmoud Abbas

O What A Freedom Is Thine! Freedom from Condemnation. Freedom to the Promises, Freedom to the Throne of Grace, and at last Freedom to Enter Heaven! ~ Charles Spurgeon

I am convinced that our people are now on the way to establishing a Palestinian state. The agreement signed in Cairo is the first step in establishing the state, and therefore it should be implemented. ~ Yasser Arafat

When I first started out in this music industry, I was most concerned with freedom. Freedom to produce, freedom to play all the instruments on my records, freedom to say anything I wanted to. ~ Prince

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had. ~ Joe Biden

The freedom from something is not true freedom. The freedom to do anything you want to do is also not the freedom I am talking about. My vision of freedom is to be yourself. ~ Rajneesh

I really wasn't very involved politically with anything up until that point. Then I started reading about the second Palestinian Intifada, and I spoke to friends in activist and journalism circles. Then, somehow by complete luck, I ended up at Democracy Now. ~ Sharif Abdel Kouddous

The Palestinian people do not beg the world for a state, and the state can't be created through decisions and initiatives. States liberate their land first and then the political body can be established. ~ Ismail Haniyeh

The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation. The file of political detention must be closed. ~ Said Seyam

The criticisms that are often presented to us by some in the conservative Jewish community about our Palestinian version are: first, that the U.S. is not in conflict with "Palestine" (quotes are theirs) and second, that Conflict Kitchen should counter the Palestinian viewpoints it presents with pro-Israeli viewpoints, otherwise we are spreading dangerous propaganda. ~ Jon Rubin

Netanyahu adheres to his old position: He doesn't want a Palestinian state, and he doesn't want to give up the settlements and the occupied territories. Pressure from abroad is the only way to change anything. ~ Tom Segev

Crime must be brought under control ... Freedom without civility, freedom without the ability to live in peace, was not true freedom at all. ~ Nelson Mandela

If the corrupt Jordanian monarchy were overthrown, it would be the ideal opportunity to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because the West Bank and Jordan could then be united. There is already a Palestinian majority in Jordan, and there is enough room for everyone there. That would be the best revolution I could imagine. ~ Tom Segev

Real freedom is freedom from the opinions of others. Above all, freedom from your opinions about yourself. ~ Brennan Manning