1967 Quotes

“Hussein told Herzog that Israel should not have taken Nasser’s declarations to heart, and, like Herzog, he proceeded to deliver an analysis of his own people’s mentality: “With the Arabs, words don’t have the same value as they do for other people. Threats mean nothing.” For many years, this had been one of the great failings of the Arabs: they confused words with intentions and acts.”
― Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East

“Herzog proceeded to explain that the Arabs had also never understood the bond between the Jews and the land of Israel, which was unique in human history and anchored in the spiritual origins of the Jewish people. Instead of trying to understand this phenomenon, the Arabs had looked for rational explanations for the renewal of the Jews in the land of their forefathers, as if they had returned there as mere refugees, as if the Jewish national movement were an artificial construct without roots, and as if the sources of its strength were the wealth and the power of the Western capitals.”
― Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East

“The situation between us is like the complex relationship between a Bedouin man and the young girl he has taken against her wishes,” Dayan told the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tukan. “But when their children are born, they will see the man as their father and the woman as their mother. The initial act will mean nothing to them. You, the Palestinians, as a nation, do not want us today, but we will change your attitude by imposing our presence upon you.”
― Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East