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"they will be evacuated for you to return to your original homes? I hope you can understand why Israelis are afraid of you.
Even under a peace plan you will not return to your original homes."
"Justice for you is receiving back what you lost in 1948. But that justice will be at the expense of other people."
I have a good reason to be afraid: The Palestinian people as a collective have not accepted the Jewish home in this land.
But your rights have to be balanced against our needs for survival.
In a peace plan, everybody will have to do with less than they deserve."
there could be an answer in compromise,
Bashir felt that he had not spent more than half his adult life in prison, enduring humiliation, torture, statelessness, and now deportation, for a compromise like the one Arafat seemed to be considering.
From time to time, Bashir would tell Salah about Dalia and the house in al-Ramla.
"the lemon tree which yielded so much fruit and gave us so much delight lived in other people's hearts too."
Why am I exiled from my homeland? Why am I separated from my children, Ahmad and Hanine, from my wife, from my mother, from my brothers and sisters, from my family?
Who is more entitled to a reunion, Dalia?
Zionism was this incredibly evil manifestation and that this was his experience,"
for him, it's a regime of terror.
a single state would mean the end of Israel,
this was a personal choice,
He told Michail, "Christianity is love. I didn't want you to hate the Jews. They are your neighbors."
And he felt a stranger in his own home. And all the time he was talking about Jesus. And he never had hatred for all the people who hurt him. It's amazing."
"demographic problem" in
Each wanted do something for the Arab population and provide a place where Arab and Jew could meet.
to bring joy to the Arab children of al-Ramla.
initial agreements called for limited Palestinian self-rule and a gradual Israeli pullout from the occupied territories.
"This is your reward for selling Palestine,"
"Our fighters have been killed, our thinkers assassinated, and all we have left are the profiteers."
each side in this conflict had to give up something precious.
I have always believed most of the nation wants peace and is prepared to take risks for peace.
Rabin sang along:
"It destroyed any chances for accommodation, at least for a long time.
If Rabin had lived, would he and Arafat have worked something out?
"I felt that good people that could make a difference—they don't stand a chance."
You won't have a Palestinian state and you won't have friendships with anyone. You will be alone in the region."
The revolution is easier than peacemaking."
For the Palestinians, land was not given but given back."
It required social and political transformation on a societal scale."
I won't turn them into hostages of political decisions.
"The way to true peace: If someone comes to kills you, thwart him by killing him first!"
Am I going to abandon them?"
I am part of the solution, because I love."
hityakhadoot:
being alone and intimate with the soul of another and making space in your heart for that soul.
What Israel called terror, however, Bashir often saw as legitimate resistance.
But for them I'm a stranger."
We need to make sacrifices if both of us are to live here. We need to make sacrifices. And I know it is not fair for me to say that.
to strengthen the hand of those who are ready to make a compromise and ready to make space for us here.
that you could make space for the state of Israel, first of all in your heart, then we could find a solution on the ground.
acknowledgment of what had happened to the Palestinians in 1948, apology for it, and amends.
The Palestinians would have their right of return, but it would be limited to only a part of old Palestine.
The pain of our history.
Out of the pain, something new is growing.
“Dalia was the only one in Israel who understood,” Bashir insisted.
