Palestinian Refugees Quotes

Once the return tide starts, it will be impossible to stem it, and it will prove our undoing. ~ Moshe Sharett

The Arab world has done nothing to help the Palestinian refugees they created when they attacked Israel in 1948. It's called the 'Palestinian refugee problem.' This is one of the best tricks that the Arabs have played on the world, and they have used it to their great advantage when fighting Israel in the forum of public opinion. This lie was pulled off masterfully, and everyone has been falling for it ever since. First you tell people to leave their homes and villages because you are going to come in and kick out the Jews the day after the UN grants Israel its nationhood. You fail in your military objective, the Jews are still alive and have more land now than before, and you have thousands of upset, displaced refugees living in your country because they believed in you. So you and the UN build refugee camps that are designed to last only five years and crowd the people in, instead of integrating them into your society and giving them citizenship.
After a few years of overcrowding and deteriorating living conditions, you get the media to visit and publish a lot of pictures of these poor people living in the hopeless, wretched squalor you have left them in. In 1967 you get all your cronies together with their guns and tanks and planes and start beating the war drums. Again the same old story: you really are going to kill all the Jews this time or drive them into the sea, and everyone will be able to go back home, take over what the Jews have developed, and live in a Jew- ~ Brigitte Gabriel

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

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

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

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

I have been a long-time advocate for a just Arab-Israeli peace and for Palestinian refugees. Today, as you are aware, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan and Iraq are being overwhelmed by those fleeing the conflict in Syria, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Many are severely tortured - abused women and their traumatized children whose husbands, fathers, and brothers have been killed or permanently disabled. ~ Queen Noor Of Jordan

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

I'm in total sympathy with Dick Smith's sentiments; I only wish there were grounds for saying we Australians would never tolerate such appalling treatment of refugees being carried out in our name. ~ Hugh Mackay

And though various organizations in America and England collected money and sent food parcels to these refugees, nothing was ever received by the Spanish. ~ Martha Gellhorn

When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is persuaded to blow herself up, and in doing so she kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, we are watching the future itself die! ~ George W. Bush

For example, grown men who sneer at the idea of unicorns will tearfully testify to the existence of an even rarer, more mythical species. Found only in remote ports of call and the darkest, deepest reaches of the most insalubrious taverns, this is the prostitute in whose chest beats the proverbial heart of gold. Let me assure you, if there is one part of a prostitute that is made of gold, it is not her heart. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves. ~ Chris Cleave

I thanked the President [George W. Bush] for the steadfastness and resolve with which he's tackling the very complicated problems in the Middle East and Iraq, as well as the Israel-Palestinian issue ... It's critical for us in Southeast Asia that America does that ... because it affects America's standing in Asia and the world, and also the security environment in Asia because extremists, the jihadists, watch carefully what's happening in the Middle East and take heart, or lose heart, depending on what's happening. ~ Lee Hsien Loong

I am not at all sure we could ever reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians' present leadership. We shall have to wait for the next generation. The most we could expect is, perhaps, another interim agreement. A Palestinian state? A permanent settlement? I do not see that happening in the coming years. ~ Shaul Mofaz

The entire Islamic world condemned Iran. Nowadays, because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, there is massive Islamic condemnation of the United States. ~ Jimmy Carter

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

We shouldn't have a program where we just say that we're going to take care of the world's refugees. Nobody in the Middle East is doing anything. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait - all the Gulf nations are doing nothing. ~ Rand Paul

I said to you,
"Hold my hand.
Nothing bad will happen."

These are only words.
A father's tricks,
It slays your father,
your faith in him.
Because all I can think tonight is
how deep the sea,
and how vast, how indifferent.
How powerless I am to protect you from it.

All I can do is pray. ~ Khaled Hosseini

A document from the reign of King Henry VIII described one of the two actual axes used for the beheadings. The story was that the relic was displayed in the church; it gave both the church and the street their odd names. In the early 1560s refugees from Spain used it as a place of worship but by then it was in a state of disrepair. It was demolished shortly thereafter, taken down to the foundation. Another building, the one which Thomas and Belinda Russell owned today, was built in 1620 on the ruins of the ancient church. ~ Bill Thompson

There's no deep bench there, Mahmoud Abbas is, I think, the best leader of the Palestinians we could field. ~ Jane Harman

However, the beach is cluttered with 12-year-old "Howdy-Doody" refugees, making the walk to the beach both annoying and hazardous. ~ Mickey Dora

We are all wanderers and travellers, refugees and pilgrims until we return once more to the stars. ~ David Almond

I hate being told I can't do something because I'm a girl! ~ Thanhha Lai

During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khmer Rouge, which had been in power from 1975 to 1979, was well known. Many of the women had been raped or tortured or otherwise brutalized. Most had seen family members murdered in front of them. One woman, who never again saw her husband and three children after soldiers came and took them away, said that she had lost her sight after having cried every day for four years. She was not the only one who appeared to have cried herself blind. Others suffered from blurred or partial vision, their eyes troubled by shadows and pains.

The doctors examined the women - about a hundred and fifty in all - found that their eyes were normal. Further tests showed that their brains were normal as well. If the women were telling the truth - and there were some who doubted this, who thought the women might be malingering because they wanted attention or were hoping to collect disability - the only explanation was psychosomatic blindness.

In other words, the women's minds, forced to take in so much horror and unable to take more, had managed to turn out the lights. ~ Sigrid Nunez

The Palestinians are a miserable people ... and they deserve to be. ~ Daniel Pipes

Tens of thousands of North Korean women have been sold to Chinese men. By some estimates, three quarters of the roughly 100,000 North Korean refugees living in China are women and more than half of them live in arranged unions with Chinese men. ~ Barbara Demick

Other than the bombs they strap to their chests, Ive got no idea what makes the Palestinians tick. ~ Dennis Miller

And the real beauty of it all for the cynical exploiters was that ordinary people didn't care. Not really. No one had asked the refugees, the prostitutes, the fortune hunters, and the orphans to come knocking on Denmark's door. No one had invited them, and no one knew how many there were. Crimes committed against them had nothing to do with ordinary people and the usual workings of law and order. It ~ Lene Kaaberbol

The common man or women, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian, Protestant or Catholic or Iraqi or American, the common man just wants to live in peace and justice in a clean environment. When we look around the world and we see that is not the case, we know the will of the majority is not being listened to, that's the first sign that our system is broken. ~ Woody Harrelson

A policy of peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine is the foundation of the tower, which will be built for the future; and visible from afar, the tower will be a non-violent symbol forever lasting peace. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try. ~ Alice Walker

Now, in this generation, the entirety of the globe is facing an ideological and socio-political collapse on a grand scale. This is by design, it is man-made. The outcome is still carefully assessed with little room for error or improvement. There is only one flaw: the divine element in humanity. Our sentient consciousness bestows with the capacity to support the freedom of thought and movement with the inherent awareness that both come at a cost. When we speak our minds, we are going to offend and be offended. There are no safe spaces in conversation. People will say things we don't like. We have to accept this is the price of freedom of speech. When we allow for freedom of movement during times of war, we have to accept that we are inviting in enemies as well as refugees, especially when we don't bother to discern which is which. Even the best, most selfless intentions can pave the way to our downfall... ~ Anita B. Sulser PhD

The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese
and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.
Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. ~ Eric Hoffer

At the end of the day, it's not about who the refugees are, or if they are refugees at all. We are not helping "the refugees", we care only about the People behind the label because we are all human beings. We create those borders inside our heads and pretend that we care about where each of us comes from, allowing those borders to limit our way of thinking and living. ~ Ra'ad Ammari

People have accused me at times of having too big of a heart.But I have to also to say I must keep the people of my state safe. So we take a pause [in taking refugees]. ~ John Kasich

The suicide bomber who blows up Israeli children cannot transform himself into a martyr. The Palestinian problem is not an Islamic problem. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Building a neighbourhood takes a very long time. It takes at least twenty years and then some. Like a garden, a neighbourhood must be tended regularly and by many people. There are seeds to be sown, little plants to water. And yes, every day there are weeds to be pulled, small problems to be solved before they overwhelm what is good. It is a humble task, and it is never over. There are days when you think the slightest storm could blow all this loveliness away. ~ Mary Jo Leddy

Though Israel is charged with engaging in genocide against Palestinians, in the last 20 years, the number of Palestinians has doubled; and since Israel's founding in 1948, the Palestinian population has grown five-fold. It must surely rank as the least effective genocide in world history. ~ Dennis Prager

However, they did not treat the reasons that led to this condition. I believe that the conditions in the Palestinian territories are alway capable of explosion because the same circumstances are there. ~ Hassan Nasrallah

Just a little piece of peace can cultivate the land of Palestine, but inhuman human won't let it do that ... ~ Munia Khan

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

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

You might get the impression from the specifics of my less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn't be too far off base. ~ Anthony Bourdain

I believe that the majority of people in Europe want to demonstrate solidarity with the refugees. ~ Martin Schulz

They only see us when we do something they don't want us to do, Mahmoud realized. The thought hit him like a lightning bolt. When they stayed where they were supposed to be - in the ruins of Aleppo or behind the fences of a refugee camp - people could forget about them. But when refugees did something they didn't want them to do - when they tried to cross the border into their country, or slept on the front stoops of their shops, or jumped in front of their cars, or prayed on the decks of their ferries - that's when people couldn't ignore them any longer.
Mahmoud's first instinct was to disappear below decks. To be invisible. Being invisible in Syria had kept him alive. But now Mahmoud began to wonder if being invisible in Europe might be the death of him and his family. If no one saw them, no one could help them. And maybe the world needed to see what was really happening here. ~ Alan Gratz

We are very serious about imposing weapons restrictions on the PFLP and other Palestinian groups operating from their camps in Lebanon. ~ Walid Jumblatt

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

Begin claimed that Sadat's visit to Jerusalem was merely a grand gesture, and that what Sadat really wanted was a Palestinian state and ~ Lawrence Wright

Sometimes the results of a first free election will find the moderates so poorly organized that extreme groups can eke out a victory, as Hamas did when it gained a 44-to-41 percent margin in the Palestinian election of 2006. ~ Elliott Abrams

You still can't find Israel on a map of the Middle East in a Palestinian schoolbook. ~ Suzanne Fields

Thus, on this World Refugee Day, let us take time to recognize and draw inspiration from these ordinary people who have shown such extraordinary courage - the world's millions of refugees and displaced. ~ Antonio Guterres

I'm not trying to defend Israel. What I'm telling my nation is that Israel is just like any other state, and I want them to get out of the illusion that Jewish people are evil, and that all they want is to kill Muslims and Palestinians. I want them to understand that their biggest problem is not Israel. ~ Mosab Hassan Yousef

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens
and honor its own previous commitments
by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel's right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories. ~ Jimmy Carter

In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10: 25-37), Jesus taught us that every stranger in need is our neighbor. Refugees as well as immigrants command the Church's care. ~ Francis George