Question 1: Does Israel have a right to exist?

Kofi Annan, MS, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, in a Mar. 28, 2001 speech to the Arab League, stated:

"The international community and the Arab world have every right to criticise Israel for its continued occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory, and for its excessively harsh response to the Intifada. But these points could be made more effectively if many Israelis did not believe that their existence was under threat. Israel has a right, enshrined in numerous United Nations resolutions, to exist in safety within internationally recognised borders... What we need is movement towards an agreement that responds both to the legitimate desire of the Palestinians for national independence, and to the legitimate claims of the Israelis to recognition and security."

Mar. 28, 2001 - Kofi Annan, MS  

Question 1: Does Israel have a right to exist?Ahmad Nasser, former Secretary of the Palestinian Legislative Council, on PA (Palestinian Authority) TV, Feb. 6, 2004, stated the following as quoted by Palestinian Media Watch:

"Israel was established on the basis of theft. The State of Israel is Satan's offspring - a satanic offspring. It was founded on theft from the first moment. It was founded on the basis of robbery, terror, killing, torture, assassination, death, stealing land and killing people and will continue this way, never able to exist because its birth was unnatural, a satanic offspring, and cannot exist among human beings...

It cannot exist naturally, like other nations in this world."

Feb. 6, 2004 - Ahmad Nasser  

Question 1: Does Israel have a right to exist?Yasser Arafat, former chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in a Sep. 9, 1993 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, wrote:

"The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in Peace and security...The PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid."

Sep. 9, 1993 - Yasser Arafat   Exchange of Letters Between Yassir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin Before the Signing of the Oslo Declaration of Principles

Question 1: Does Israel have a right to exist?Achmad Cassiem, Imam, National Chairperson of the South African Islamic Unity Convention, in a May 23, 2002 speech given on Radio 786 (a Muslim community radio station in Cape Town, South Africa), stated:

"Our position is that even if the Zionist State [Israel] is the size of a postage stamp it has no right to exist. Occupied Palestine must be decolonized, deracialized and restored to the Palestinian people as a single sovereign state. In plain English, the Zionist State must be dismantled."

May 23, 2002 –

Question 1: Does Israel have a right to exist?The 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, signed by Jordan's King Hussein on Oct. 26, 1994, contains the following statement:

"Peace is hereby established between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the State of Israel (the 'Parties') effective from the exchange of the instruments of ratification of this Treaty...

They recognize and will respect each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence... They recognize and will respect each other's right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries...

They respect and recognize the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the region."

Oct. 26, 1994 - Treaty of Peace Between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Question 2: Did the Holocaust justify the case for the establishment of Israel?The 1948 Israeli Declaration of Statehood, included the following statement:

"The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations. Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland."

May 14, 1948 - Israeli Decalaration of Statehood   (18 KB)

Question 2: Did the Holocaust justify the case for the establishment of Israel?John Spritzler, ScD, Research Scientist in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health, in an Aug., 2002 letter posted on www.newdemocracyworld.org wrote (accessed on Mar. 26, 2007):

"Zionists claim that the Holocaust demonstrates what they have asserted since 1896 - that non-Jews are innately anti-Semitic and that, to survive in a hostile world, Jews need a state of their own. But the real history of the Holocaust demonstrates no such thing... The Holocaust does not demonstrate that non-Jews are innately anti-Semitic any more than slavery demonstrates that whites are innately racist against blacks...The Holocaust is no more a reason for Jews to have a state of their own than slavery is a reason for African-Americans to have a pure 'Black state' of their own."

Aug. 2002 - John Spritzler, Sc.D  

Question 2: Did the Holocaust justify the case for the establishment of Israel?David K. Shipler, MA, author and journalist, in his 2002 book Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land, wrote:

"The [Jewish] migration [to Palestine] gained urgency as Hitler came to power, promulgated anti-Jewish laws in Germany in the 1930s, then rounded up Jews in Germany and in the expanding sphere of German-occupied countries, restricted them to ghettos, shot them, deported them to concentration camps, and exterminated an estimated 6 million of them in the cause of racial purity. Out of this Holocaust grew the international compassion for the purpose of a new Israel as a sanctuary for the Jews."

2002

Question 2: Did the Holocaust justify the case for the establishment of Israel?Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, PhD, Iranian President, at a Dec. 14, 2005 speech in Zahedan, Iran, said:

"Today, they have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets. If you [Western nations] committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay the price? This is our proposal: If you committed the crime, then give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them so that the Jews can establish their country."

Dec. 14, 2005

Question 2: Did the Holocaust justify the case for the establishment of Israel?The US Library of Congress Country Studies, in a 1988 entry on "Israel and the Holocaust," contained the following:

"For much of world Jewry that had suffered centuries of persecution, Zionism and its call for a Jewish national home and for the radical transformation of the Jew from passive victim to self-sufficient citizen residing in his own homeland became the only possible positive response to the Holocaust." 

Question 3: Should Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the land that has become the nation of Israel?British Broadcasting Corporation News (BBC), in a Feb. 18, 2003 article titled "Right of Return: Palestinian Dream?," offered the following account:

"There are more than 3.7 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East and many more worldwide - and they want the right to go home. The Palestinians say their diaspora - uprooted from their homes ever since 1948 and scattered around the globe - is the greatest and most enduring refugee problem in the world. Whether they will be allowed to return to the land that used to be called Palestine is, and always has been, one of the main obstacles to progress in the Middle East peace process...

Palestinian assertions of the right of return for themselves and their descendants are based both on a moral standpoint, claiming the refugees' rights to return to homes from which they have been

displaced, and on a number of resolutions issued by the United Nations. At the heart of these is General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948. It states that Palestinian 'refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date.'"

Question 3: Should Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the land that has become the nation of Israel?The United Nations Relief and Works Agency's (UNRWA) recommendation to the UN General Assembly, resulted in the Dec. 8, 2005 adoption of UN Resolution 60/101 concerning individuals who were displaced as a result of the June 1967 aggression. With 161 votes in favor, six votes against and five abstentions, the draft proposal stated:

"By a draft on persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 and subsequent hostilities (document A/C.4/60/L.10), the Assembly would reafirm the right of all those persons to return to their homes or former places of residence in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Expressing its deep concern that the mechanism agreed upon by the parties (in the 1993 Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements) for the return of displaced persons has not been complied with, the Assembly would stress the necessity of an accelerated return."

Dec. 8, 2005 - United Nations

Question 3: Should Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the land that has become the nation of Israel?Ariel Sharon, former Israeli Prime Minister, quoted in a May 7, 2003 Jerusalem Post article titled "Sharon: Palestinian 'right of return' off the table," stated:

"The right of return is a recipe for the destruction of Israel."

May 7, 2003 - Ariel Sharon  

Question 3: Should Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the land that has become the nation of Israel?

The Palestine Ministry of Information, under the topic of Refugees, posted the following opinion on its website (accessed Nov. 21, 2003):

"Israel must recognize the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. Every refugee should be permitted to return if he or she chooses to do so."

Question 3: Should Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the land that has become the nation of Israel?Terence Prittie, the late British author and journalist , in a 1973 essay titled "Middle East Refugees," published in a compilation The Palestinians: People, History, Politics, wrote the following:

"Palestinian refugees have been systematically encouraged to demand the right to return to old homes which, in a physical sense, disappeared decades ago. The Table below gives approximate figures of refugees from different countries who, since 1945, have been resettled elsewhere. World opinion has accepted the terms of their resettlement, and in no instance has there been any outside backing of a 'return' to the former homeland. Any such return has, in fact, been castigated as the worst kind of irredentism.

India / Pakistan - 15 million Finland - 400,000 Czechoslovakia - 1.5 million Poland - 2.8 million East Germany - 7.5 million

DDR - 3.8 million Roumania - 1.2 million

This, of course, is an incomplete list. There have been a great many other movements of refugees, of a minor nature. But this short list indicates that up to 35 million refugees have been successfully absorbed in the countries in which they have found refuge. In no single case has a claim to repatriation been supported, let alone upheld."

1973

Question 4: Should the Palestinians have their own nation?Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister of Israel, in a Oct. 8, 2000 interview with Washington Post columnist Lally Weymouth, when asked "Should there be a Palestinian state?," responded:

"As long as it is reached by an agreement, not a unilateral act, and there is no army there--just a demilitarized zone with restrictions on the size of the police force and the number of heavy weapons.

And there should be understandings and cooperation on the economy. If they should decide to make their area a free-trade zone, they could destroy us. There must be open borders between the Palestinian entity and Israel. Practically, there is a Palestinian state in creation. The Arabs should not take any unilateral steps, because Israel will have to annex those areas under our control."

Oct. 8, 2000 - Ariel Sharon  

Question 4: Should the Palestinians have their own nation?Ze'ev B. Begin, PhD, son of the late Prime Minister Menahem Begin and former Member of the Israeli Knesset, in a 1991 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Likud Vision for Israel at Peace," wrote:

"Legitimate rights [of the Palestinians] do not include the right to establish another Arab state, especially as we know that such a state would eventually be established upon the ruins of the state of Israel.

We must make every effort to reach an agreement with our Arab neighbors based on mutual respect, but we must not yield to the false claim that such an agreement must be based on the fictitious recognition of a 'symmetry' between the rights of the Jewish nation and that small portion -- one percent -- of the Arab nation in the western Land of Israel."

1991

Question 4: Should the Palestinians have their own nation?Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, in his Nov. 12, 2004 remarks made with President Bush, released by the White House Office of the Press Secretary, stated:

"If we want a viable Palestinian state, we need to make sure that the political, the economic, and the security infrastructure of that state is shaped and helped to come into being. We will mobilize international opinion and the international community in order to do that."

Nov. 12, 2004

Question 4: Should the Palestinians have their own nation?Emanuel A. Winston, a Middle East analyst and commentator, in a Feb. 21, 2002 USA Today commentary titled "No to Palestinian state," wrote:

"A PLO state will only guarantee unending war, drawing in all like-minded nations. The simple answer, instead, would be to create a vast separation from Israel, resettling the Palestinians in Jordan, where 80% of the population already is Palestinian."

Question 5: Is intifada a legitimate way for Palestinians to protest against the Israeli government? Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, 2002.

“Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been under way for several decades, it is only since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising [starting in 2000], that the fight has escalated to the status of a full-scale war. When Yasir Arafat refused the peace process advocated by the Clinton administration in 2000, he knowingly chose the horror of war for the Palestinian people. The Palestinians have demonstrated through their terrorist tactics and their constant refusal to honor calls for cease-fires that they prefer passion over politics, struggle over solution. It is the constant Palestinian attacks against Israelis coupled with the belief that such attacks will further the Palestinian cause that points to Palestinians as the source of the conflict… instead of Palestinian diplomacy, there is Palestinian delirium… a doctrine that might be called strategic death.”

Question 5: Is intifada a legitimate way for Palestinians to protest against the Israeli government? Alphonse DeValk, editor of the magazine Catholic Insight, 2002.

“Palestinians… have been stripped of their rights and privileges, and Israel has been unwilling to allow the formation of an independent Palestinian state that might satisfy Palestinian demands for redress. It is up to Israel to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict… Acts of injustice against the Arab population became daily occurrences… Entry into Israel for finding work was turned on and off like a water tap; their educational institutions were closed regularly… personal humiliations with curfews, travel bans, arrests, beatings, and imprisonments were encountered daily.”

Question 6: Are Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip an obstacle to the peace process? Jimmy Carter, former US President, in a Nov. 26, 2000 Washington Post editorial titled "For Israel, Land or Peace," wrote:

"An underlying reason that years of U.S. diplomacy have failed and violence in the Middle East persists is that some Israeli leaders continue to "create facts" by building settlements in occupied territory. Their deliberate placement as islands or fortresses within Palestinian areas makes the settlers vulnerable to attack without massive military protection, frustrates Israelis who seek peace and at the same time prevents any Palestinian government from enjoying effective territorial integrity."

Nov. 26, 2000

Question 6: Are Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip an obstacle to the peace process? Daniel Pipes, PhD, Director of the Middle East Forum, in a Feb. 10, 2004 New York Sun editorial titled "Sharon Loses His Way On Israeli 'Settlements'," wrote:

"To uproot Israeli habitations assumes that they pose a large, perhaps insuperable, barrier to a Palestinian-Israeli resolution. In contrast, I see them as a minor obstacle. Once the Palestinian Arabs do fully, irrevocably, in deed as well as in word, accept the existence of a Jewish state, all sorts of possibilities for ending the conflict open up."

Feb. 10, 2004

Question 6: Are Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip an obstacle to the peace process? Brit Tzedek v’Shalom (Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace), a Jewish-American non-profit organization working towards the creation of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in a campaign letter titled "Bring the Settlers Home to Israel" posted on its website (accessed June 7, 2007), wrote:

"We are American Jews who care deeply about Israel and who are filled with sorrow by the continuous cycle of violence and death in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We call upon the US government to embrace an initiative that can build on the momentum generated by the Gaza withdrawal, lay the groundwork for a negotiated settlement, safeguard the lives of Israeli settlers, and remove a major obstacle to peace."

June 7, 2007 -

Question 6: Are Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip an obstacle to the peace process?The Palestine Liberation Organization's Negotiations Affairs Department (PLO-NAD) contained the following position on the settlements in Dec. 14, 1996:

"Israeli colonies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are not only illegal but also threaten the viability of a two-state solution. As part of a viable two-state solution, all Israeli colonies must be evacuated. One way to achieve a peaceful evacuation of the colonies would be for the government of Israel to remove all economic and other incentives luring Israelis into Occupied Territory while simultaneously providing similar incentives for current settlers to move back to Israel."

Dec. 14, 2996

Question 7: Is the construction of a wall/fence by Israelis justified? John McCain, US Senator (R-AZ), as quoted in an Aug. 18, 2003 Associated Press article titled "Israel begins to fence borders":

"Many of us in Congress feel it [the security fence] is an important contributor to the reduction of acts of terrorism."

Aug. 18, 2003

Question 7: Is the construction of a wall/fence by Israelis justified? Noam Chomsky, PhD, Professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in a Feb. 23, 2004 New York Times commentary titled "A Wall as a Weapon," wrote:

"What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands."

Feb. 23, 2004 - N

Question 7: Is the construction of a wall/fence by Israelis justified? Charles Schumer, JD, US Senator (D-NY), as quoted in an Aug. 5, 2003 Associated Press article:

"By building a security fence in the West Bank, the Israeli government is pushing a reasonable defensive policy that respects the terms of the cease-fire currently in force and does no violence to the Palestinian people."

Aug. 5, 2003

Question 7: Is the construction of a wall/fence by Israelis justified? Nasser Al-Kidwa, DDS, Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations, as quoted in a Feb. 23, 2004 Associated Press article titled "Palestinians Open Case Against Barrier":

"This wall is not about security. It is about entrenching the occupation and the de facto annexation of large areas of the Palestinian land."

Feb. 23, 2004

Question 7: Is the construction of a wall/fence by Israelis justified? Dennis Ross, PhD, Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in an Aug. 4, 2003 Wall Street Journal commentary titled "When is a Fence not a Fence?" wrote the following:

"Truth be told, those responsible for the fence are Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Their terror produced the impulse for the fence. If violence were not a threat, the fence would not be necessary."

Aug. 4, 2003

Question 7: Is the construction of a wall/fence by Israelis justified?The United Nations adopted the Oct. 27, 2003 Resolution ES-10/13 that stated:

"...[T]he route marked out for the wall under construction by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, could prejudge future negotiations and make the two-State solution physically impossible to implement and would cause further humanitarian hardship to the Palestinians..."

Oct. 27, 2003

Question 8: Who should get control of Jerusalem? Michael C. Hudson, PhD, Professor of Government and International Relations at Georgetown University, in a 2000 essay titled "The Transformation of Jerusalem 1917-2000 AD," published in Jerusalem in History, wrote:

"Clearly there are no simple answers to the Jerusalem problem. Yet the dangers to the city are too serious to permit it to fester unattended. The many friends of Jerusalem in the world would be doing a service if they would promote active and creative discussion about the city's future. These include those who can speak for the three religions for whom the city is so holy as well as those who can influence the policies of the states and political communities directly involved: Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan and the other Arab states. In the search for an overall settlement ideas such as shared or dual sovereignty, cantonization, or even repartition without walls might, if properly developed, help solve not only the Jerusalem problem but the entire conflict."

2000

Question 8: Who should get control of Jerusalem? As outlined in the published Beilin-Eitan Plan:

Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, within its existing municipal borders, will be a single unified city within sovereign Israel. The Palestinians will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Israel will recognize the governing center of the Palestinian entity which will be within the borders of the entity and outside the existing municipal borders of Jerusalem. Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem will be granted special status. Within the framework of the municipal government the Palestinian residents of Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem will receive a status that will allow them to share in the responsibility of the administration of their lives in the city. Other similar proposals call for a Palestinian autonomy in Arab neighborhoods which were not part of pre-1967 municipal Jerusalem, but which were annexed by Israel in 1980. 

While there is growing Israeli support for this type of arrangement, it is unclear if Palestinians would agree to an arrangement in which their capital is not in municipal Jerusalem, and without the Temple Mount." 1997