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Palestine

geographic region in western Asia From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium

In what world is there no argument when an entire people is told that it is juridically absent, even as armies are led against it, campaigns conducted against even its name, history changed so as to “prove” its nonexistence? ~ Edward Said
Flag of Palestine

Palestine is a geographic region in Western Asia between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The name was used by Ancient Greek writers, and was later used for the Roman province Syria Palaestina, the Byzantine Palaestina Prima, and the Islamic provincial district of Jund Filastin. It is usually considered to include Israel and the State of Palestine, though some definitions also include parts of northwestern Jordan. Historical names for the region include Land of Israel, the Holy Land, and Canaan. As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics.

See Also: 2023 Israel–Hamas war

A

After the war it turned out that the Jewish question, which was considered the only insoluble one, was indeed solved—namely, by means of a colonized and then conquered territory—but this solved neither the problem of minorities nor the stateless. On the contrary, like virtually all other events of our century, the solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs, thereby increasing the number of the stateless by another 700,000 to 800,000 people. ~ Hannah Arendt
  • People don't feel that safe being part of something that will be associated with the U.S. They get intimidated because they think they'll be on some type of grid.
  • Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart.
    • Yasser Arafat, addressing an Arab Summit in 1974, as quoted in TIME (11 November 1974), Vol. 104, No. 20
  • It pains our people greatly to witness the propagation of the myth that its homeland was a desert until it was made to bloom by the toil of foreign settlers, that it was a land without a people, and that the colonialist entity caused no harm to any human being. No: such lies must be exposed from this rostrum, for the world must know that Palestine was the cradle of the most ancient cultures and civilizations.
    • Yasser Arafat, text of his speech to the UN General Assembly on November 13, 1974, archived by Al-Bab
  • After the war it turned out that the Jewish question, which was considered the only insoluble one, was indeed solved—namely, by means of a colonized and then conquered territory—but this solved neither the problem of minorities nor the stateless. On the contrary, like virtually all other events of our century, the solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs, thereby increasing the number of the stateless by another 700,000 to 800,000 people.

B

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people... ~ Arthur James Balfour

C

  • I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

F

  • I sometimes fantasize vacationing in Greece or Italy but never do. If I have time and cost isn't prohibitive, I always return to Palestine. I do so mostly from a sense of duty – do I have a right to be elsewhere? – relieved by the authentic affection I've developed for friends. I cannot say I enjoy going back. From the moment I arrive, even before arriving, I count the minutes left before I depart. The eminent Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Gaza as "the largest concentration camp ever to exist." The West Bank ranks only a mite less awful. Once the Israeli wall currently under construction is finished, the West Bank will replace Gaza with top honors. Bordered on both sides by four meter deep trenches, fortified with guard towers at regular intervals, and topped with barbed wire, this massive barricade will stretch across fully 347 kilometers – twice the size of the Berlin Wall.

H

K

  • At the beginning of 1968, the word Palestinian was generally used to refer to members of Arab guerrilla units, which were also frequently referred to in the Western press as terrorist organizations. These groups used the label Palestinian, as in the Palestine Liberation Front, the Palestinian Revolution, the Palestine Revolutionary Youth Movement, the Vanguard for Palestine Liberation, the Palestinian Revolutionaries Front, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. At least twenty-six such groups were operating before the 1967 war.
    • Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World (2004), pp. 17-18
  • Herzl's thinking and his reply to Yusuf Diya appear to have been based on the assumption that the Arabs could ultimately be bribed or fooled into ignoring what the Zionist movement actually intended for Palestine. This condescending attitude toward the intelligence, not to speak of the rights, of the Arab population of Palestine was to be serially repeated by Zionist, British, European, and American leaders in the decades that followed, down to the present day. As for the Jewish state that was ultimately created by the movement Herzl founded, as Yusuf Diya foresaw, there was to be room there for only one people, the Jewish people: others would indeed be "spirited away," or at best tolerated.
    • Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (2020), pp. 7-8

M

What was all of this area before the First World War when Britain got the Mandate over Palestine? What was Palestine, then? Palestine was then the area between the Mediterranean and the Iraqian border. Eastern West Bank was Palestine. ~ Golda Meir
  • When were Palestinians born? What was all of this area before the First World War when Britain got the Mandate over Palestine? What was Palestine, then? Palestine was then the area between the Mediterranean and the Iraqian border. Eastern West Bank was Palestine. I am a Palestinian, from 1921 to 1948, I carried a Palestinian passport. There was no such thing in this area as Jews, and Arabs, and Palestinians, There were Jews and Arabs.
    • Golda Meir, "Iron Lady of Israeli politics", Thames TV (1970)
  • Hail to the spot Heaven favoured, land divine,
    Revered, long-suffering, beauteous Palestine!
  • The Palestinian people [do] not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism... For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
    • Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council, in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw (March 31, 1977)

R

  • Neither Israeli nor Palestinian society is a seamless, monochrome garment: hope as well as difficulty lies in this recognition.
    • Adrienne Rich "Jewish Days and Nights" in Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon, eds., Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003) and A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997-2008 (2009)
  • It is the psychological problem of how to reconcile two powerful movements — the time-old yearning of the Jews to return to the Promised Land and to possess a home which is theirs as of right, and the Palestinian Arab desire for promotion to national status.
    • Great Britain and Palestine: 1915–1939 (Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1937)

S

The pleasure of tending, tending something that will not be taken away. A family, a tree, growing for so long, finally fruiting olives, the benevolence of branch, and not to find a chopped trunk upon return. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye, "What Do Palestinians Want?"
Most Americans seem unaware that the Palestinians actually lived in Palestine before Israel came into existence. ~ Edward Said
Israel itself, as well as its supporters, has tried to efface the Palestinian in words and actions because the Jewish state in many (but not all) ways is built on negation of Palestine and the Palestinians. Until today, it is a striking fact that merely to mention the Palestinians or Palestine in Israel, or to a convinced Zionist, is to name the unnameable, so powerfully does our bare existence serve to accuse Israel of what it did to us. ~ Edward Said
  • A certain number of basic premises inform the book's argument. One is the continuing existence of a Palestinian Arab people. Another is that an understanding of their experience is necessary to an understanding of the impasse between Zionism and the Arab world. Still another is that Israel itself, as well as its supporters, has tried to efface the Palestinian in words and actions because the Jewish state in many (but not all) ways is built on negation of Palestine and the Palestinians. Until today, it is a striking fact that merely to mention the Palestinians or Palestine in Israel, or to a convinced Zionist, is to name the unnameable, so powerfully does our bare existence serve to accuse Israel of what it did to us.
    • Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (1979), p. xvi, 2nd edition (1992), p. xlii
  • By what moral or political standard are we expected to lay aside our claims to our national existence, our land, our human rights? In what world is there no argument when an entire people is told that it is juridically absent, even as armies are led against it, campaigns conducted against even its name, history changed so as to “prove” its nonexistence?
    • Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (1979), p. xvii, 2nd edition (1992), p. xliii
  • The asymmetry between common understanding of Zionism and of the Palestinians, however, has in general suppressed the values and the history of troubles animating the Palestinians throughout this century, since most Americans seem unaware that the Palestinians actually lived in Palestine before Israel came into existence. Yet only if those values and history are taken account of, can we begin to sece the bases for compromise, settlement, and finally, peace.
  • Ever since its founding in 1948, Israel has enjoyed an astonishing dominance in matters of scholarship, political discourse, international presence, and valorization. Israel was taken to represent the best in the Western and biblical traditions. Its citizens were soldiers, yes, but also farmers, scientists, and artists; its miraculous transformation of an "arid and empty land" gained universal admiration, and so on and on. In all this, Palestinians were either "Arabs," or anonymous creatures of the sort that could only disrupt and disfigure a wonderfully idyllic narrative. Still more important, Israel represented (if it did not always play the role of) a nation in search of peace, while the Arabs were warlike, bloodthirsty, bent on extermination and prey to irrational violence, more or less forever.
    • Edward Said, The Question of Palestine, 2nd edition (1992), p. xlii
  • I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.
  • The pleasure of tending, tending
    something that will not be taken away.
    A family, a tree, growing for so long,
    finally fruiting olives, the benevolence of branch,
    and not to find a chopped trunk upon return.
    Confidence in a threshold. A little green.
    And quite a modest green untouched by drama.
    Or a mound of calico coverlets stuffed with wool,
    from one's own sheep, piled in a cupboard.
    To find them still piled. Is that too much?
    Not to dominate. Never to say we are the only
    people who count,
    or to be the only victims,
    the chosen, more holy or precious.
    No. Just to be ones who matter
    as much as any other, in a common way, as you
    might prefer.
    Stones and books and daily freedom.
    A little neighborly respect.
    • Naomi Shihab Nye, "What Do Palestinians Want?" in Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)
  • Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
    Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
  • Palestine is not the original home of the Jews. It was acquired by them after a ruthless conquest, and they have never occupied the whole of it, which they now openly demand. They have no more valid claim to Palestine, than the descendants of the ancient Romans have to this country. The Romans occupied Britain as long as the Israelites occupied Palestine, and they left behind them in this country far more valuable and useful work. If we are going admit claims based on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down.

T

  • The future will not change if we continue to think with the same concepts of the past... If we believe we have a right to this land and the Israelis believe they are the ones who have a right to this land, we must build a new model. If both of us believe that God gave us this land, we must put history aside and begin to think about the future in different terms.
    • Bassem Tamimi, Palestinian West Bank Protest Leader: "Israel Killed the Two-state Solution", Haaretz (17 February 2013)

U

Z

  • Both the Germans and the Zionists wanted as many Jews as possible to move to Palestine. The Germans preferred to have them out of Western Europe, and the Zionists themselves wanted the Jews in Palestine to outnumber the Arabs as quickly as possible. [...] In both cases, the purpose was a kind of 'ethnic cleansing', that is, a violent change in the ratio of ethnic groups in the population.

See also

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