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The Arab-Israeli conflict is the biggest problem, but small problems shape the daily lives of Israelis. Unless there happens to be a war going on, the Arab-Israeli conflict is irrelevant in daily life.
Sep 29, 2025
The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state.
Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty.
It was tricky [to write about Israelis], because everyone has an opinion about the Arab - Israeli conflict, and when I first started writing these stories, I was working for an Arab - Israeli human rights group. It was during the Second Intifada. It was this totally violent and intense time, and I think there's a part of me where I don't know how to write about that situation without getting my politics out of my messages, and that's something that was important for me not to do in this book.
What I, as the prime minister of the present government of Israel, started to do, is first to tackle the longest part of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jihadism have nothing to do with each other.
We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places.
It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.
There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
The Palestinian people does 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.
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist.
Enough of blood and tears. Enough!
Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs.
The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.
The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine.
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