Ariel sharon quotes

We extend our hand towards peace. Our people are committed to peace. We know that peace entails painful compromise for both sides.

Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches.

I am 73 years old. I've seen everything. I've met the kings, the queens, the presidents, I've been around the world. I have one thing that I would like to do: to try to reach peace.

On April 19 1943, the Bermuda conference gathered, with the participation of representatives from Britain and the United States, in order to discuss saving the Jews of Europe. In fact, the participants did everything in their power to avoid dealing with the problem.

Close to 80 percent of all terrorist activity in Samaria was directed and financed either by Hizbullah or the Iranians. Iran continues to increase its involvement in terror attacks inside Israel, particularly through a small but radical minority of Israeli Arabs which Iran supports and directs.

When I was born here on one of the farms in Israel, my childhood, I never thought for one day that we will not be living together with Arabs.

I have in the past declared that in order to achieve a real, just and durable peace, I would be willing to make painful compromises. But we cannot make any compromise on the security of our citizens and their right to live without the threat of terrorism and violence.

Israel has many hopes, and faces extreme dangers. The most prominent danger is Iran, which is making every effort to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and establishing an enormous terror network together with Syria in Lebanon.

The strength that I have comes from irrigating the citrus plantation, ploughing in the vineyard, guarding the melon fields at night. I believe that's what gave me the strength.

We believe only in deeds and acts and not in declarations. We are fed up with all those declarations, promises.

Iran, Libya and Syria are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve.

Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them.

I cannot say that the attitude of the United Nations always is for the Israeli attitude. Israel, I think, has been under severe attacks by members of the United Nations many times.

I don't care what the American people think, I own the congress!

And Israel, being a tiny, small country, of course has interest to strengthen - we have interest to strengthen our relations with other countries, mostly countries that were hostile for many, many years.

We have evidence that Iran makes a reactor to possess nuclear weapons.

I don't think I have accomplished what I still have to accomplish. There is one thing that I would like to do, and that's to bring security and peace to the Jewish people.

In Lebanon, there was an agreement not to liquidate Yasser Arafat. In principle, I'm sorry that we didn't liquidate him.

Ariel Sharon is a man of peace.

Legitimate steps of self-defence which Israel takes in its war against Palestinian terror - actions which any sovereign state is obligated to undertake to ensure the security of its citizens - are presented by those who hate Israel as aggressive, Nazi-like steps.

We can also reassure our Palestinian partners that we understand the importance of territorial contiguity in the West Bank for a viable Palestinian state ...

As long as I'm needed. I'll be ready to serve. I look forward with optimism. We need the Jews here. Move to Israel! Move to Israel!

All together, we know for many years that terror is the most dangerous thing for local, regional and international stability.

I am ready to compromise, but there is one thing I won't compromise on: the safety of the Israeli people.

Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there, I don’t care.

We don't have any intention whatsoever to use military force to solve the Palestinian problem. But when it comes to terror - when it comes to terror, I believe that military - the right military steps is a very, very complicated kind of warfare, where I make every effort not to escalate the situation.

Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.

The ongoing conflict between us has caused heavy suffering to both peoples. The future can and must be different. Both our peoples are destined to live together side by side, on this small piece of land. This reality we cannot change.

As one who participated in all the wars of the state of Israel, I saw the horror of wars. I saw the fear of wars. I saw my best friends being killed in battles. I was seriously injured twice.

Netanyahu is pressured easily, gets into a panic, and loses his senses... to run a country like Israel a leader needs to have reason and judgment and nerves of steel, two traits he does not have.

As a Jew, it is my historic responsibility to defend the Jewish people. I feel this responsibility for the survival of the Jewish people. We're not going to accept any decision by anybody else about security of the State of Israel. It is our role and only our role.

If we [are to] reach a situation of true peace, real peace, peace for generations, we will have to make painful concessions. Not in exchange for promises, but rather in exchange for peace.

But there's one thing we are not going to compromise at all: when it comes to security of Israeli citizens and the State of Israel, there are not going to be any compromises - not now and not in the future.

I believe that Jews and Arabs can live together. It's not an easy thing but I believe we can reach an agreement.

Both during the elections and as Prime Minister, I have repeatedly and publicly said that I support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel.

I begin with the basic conviction that Jews and Arabs can live together. I have repeated that at every opportunity, not for journalists and not for popular consumption, but because I have never believed differently or thought differently, from my childhood on. ... I know that we are both inhabitants of the land, and although the state is Jewish, that does not mean that Arabs should not be full citizens in every sense of the word.

Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.

If there will be a serious Palestinian prime minister who makes a 100 percent effort to end terrorism, then we can have peace. Each side has to take steps. If terror continues, there will not be an independent Palestinian state. Israel will not accept it, if terror continues.

People need to know why we, as the Jewish people, have a right to be here. We need to tell people what we are doing here... My tourism guidebook is the Bible.

To the citizens of Israel, I say: We have passed difficult years, faced the most painful experiences and overcome them. The future lies before us. We are required to take difficult and controversial steps, but we must not miss the opportunity to try to achieve what we have wished for, for so many years: security, tranquillity and peace.

The sad and horrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being murdered... This is the Jewish lesson of the Holocaust and this is the lesson which Auschwitz taught us.

To our Palestinian neighbours, I assure you that we have a genuine intention to respect your right to live independently and in dignity. I have already said that Israel has no desire to continue to govern over you and control your fate.

Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us.

You don't simply bundle people onto trucks and drive them away...I prefer to advocate a positive policy, to create, in effect, a condition that in a positive way will induce people to leave.

Our hearts are with you and we are ready to provide any assistance at any time....This is a war between good and evil and between humanity and the bloodthirsty.

I believe that the Jewish state will exist forever.

Israel is a wonderful country. It's a beautiful country. It is ours. But it is a country with 10,000 problems that we have to solve and deal.

Aliyah is the central goal of the State of Israel.

He held to the idea that the Jewish people, so often victims of injustice and persecution, should have a state where they could be independent and free. Think good or ill of Arik Sharon, agree or disagree with him, but that calling - a noble one - was plain and unalloyed.

We do not build new Jewish communities in Samaria, Judea and Gaza. The United States has never accepted our building of communities or of the fence. Yet, I've managed to develop relations between Israel and the United States even though President Bush never supported settlements.

Like all Israelis, I yearn for peace. I see the utmost importance in taking all possible steps that will lead to a solution of the conflict with the Palestinians.

A rabbi told me that when you have two problems - one near, one not so near - concentrate on the immediate one.

I would like to be on the farm. To ride the horses. To watch the cattle, and the plantations, and the beautiful vegetables that my sons are growing there. I would like it. I am one of those who do not have to worry about what I am doing later. I love the fields.

For me, peace should provide security to the Jewish people.

It is impossible to have a Jewish, democratic state and at the same time to control all of Eretz Israel. If we insist on fulfilling the dream in its entirety, we are liable to lose it all. Everything. That is where the extremist path takes us.

My strength never came from political echelons, it came from the family. And from the fields and the lands and the flowers and everything I see there. My strength came from there.

You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation - to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians.

One must remember that the Jews have one, tiny country, the only place they have the right and capability to defend themselves by themselves. And it is our duty and my responsibility to see that we will never compromise about that.

What you see from here is not what you see from there.

I was born on a farm. My strength has nothing to do with political apparatus. I get my strength from nature, from flowers.

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.

I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him.

I know I have been portrayed as a general looking for war. Many other headlines speak of that. That's what people say. But I understand the importance of peace because I saw the horrors of war. That's how I see it. I lost my best friends in battles.. and I had to make decisions of life and death, of others and myself.

I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal. What you don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.

A lie should be tried in a place where it will attract the attention of the world.

I am for lasting peace... United, I believe, we can win the battle for peace. But it must be a different peace, one with full recognition of the rights of the Jews in their one and only land: peace with security for generations and peace with a united Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people in the state of Israel forever.

I am the last person who would divide Jerusalem. I have said this many times. I don't plan to discuss any division of Jerusalem.

Peace should provide security. It should be durable. I'm ready to go far in making painful concessions. But there is one thing I will never make any concessions on and that's the security of the Israeli citizens and the very existence of the state of Israel. The Palestinians are losing time.

I cannot deny that I have doubts, reservations and fears. However, I have come to the conclusion that in the present regional and international reality, Israel must act with courage to accept the political plan which I described.

My mood altered and the pain turned to rage.

Myself, first of all, I am a Jew. And that is the most important thing for me.