Why Recognize Israel?

March 1, 2006

Regarding education:

“Our ministry of culture will teach them [Arab children] how the martyr is turned into prose, literature, and poetry, and how a woman, who used to cook and do the laundry, turns into one of the heroes of Palestine.”

Regarding the Right of Return:

“If they [Israel] claim that the Right of Return applies even after 2,000, 3,000, or 10,000 years to the Jews, who used to be in Palestine, we say: Apply the same principle [to us]. We left Palestine only in 1948.”

Regarding U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s demand that Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist:

“Why should we recognize Condoleezza Rice…or Israel’s right to exist? In this region we have faced Roman occupation, Persian occupation, Crusader occupation, British occupation, and they are all gone. The Israeli enemy does not belong to the region. It does not belong to the region’s history, geography, or faith. If today, we are unable to win the conflict decisively, for reasons known to all, we must not pass on to our sons a disgraceful defeat by recognizing the Israeli enemy’s right to exist, where it has no such right.”

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