We must see what in the Israeli identity - in the Israeli - we can give to other people rather than speaking so often of taking, expanding territory.
A. B. Yehoshua
Israelis are the total Jews.
It's not what the rabbis say that defines Jewishness but what we Israelis do every day - our actions and our values.
Jerusalem doesn't belong only to Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims and Jews, but to the world.
For 50 years - that is, for most of my adult life - I worked tirelessly for the two-state solution in the face of countless frustrations, both on the part of the Israeli governments and the Palestinian Authority.
The chances of Israeli science competing with big American science are small. For almost 15 years, we had no competition.
Aaron Ciechanover
The security and the future of Jordan is hand-in-hand with the future of the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Abdullah II of Jordan
Blowing up buses will not induce the Israelis to move forward, and neither will the killing of Palestinians or the demolition of their homes and their future. All this needs to stop. And we pledge that Jordan will do its utmost to help achieve it.
No matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.
Our response has been, 'Well, let's then make an effort to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to sit around the table.' That hasn't happened. So we only have ourselves to blame for this crisis.
If you look at military and intelligence positions from the 1950s, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been against American national interests.
Many occasions I've sat down with Israelis to say, where do you see your country in 10 years time, and work me back, so we can figure out the synergies and the connections between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. No Israeli has ever been able to answer that question.
After I arrived in the United States, I realized that in the army, Israelis learn how to be part of something bigger than themselves.
Adam Neumann
Serving in the Israeli Army taught me what it means to be part of something greater than yourself.
When I started at Baruch in January 2002, I was almost 23 years old. I'd previously spent five years as an officer the Israeli Navy. I did what I thought you were supposed to do at that age - a little studying and a lot of trying to have fun.
I served in the Israeli Navy, and it's not an easy thing.
The Israelites frequently forsook God, and he as frequently forsook them. But when they repented and returned to him, he remembered his covenant and delivered them from their distresses.
Adoniram Judson
In the Middle East, it is clear that peace will never be reached without solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A two-state solution must be found and enforced.
Ahmed Zewail
Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek.
Al-Waleed bin Talal
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.
Alain de Botton
Twenty five percent of Israeli citizens are not even Jewish. Anybody can become an Israeli citizen if you qualify. Religion is not a criterion for citizenship.
The Israeli military plays more than a critical role in defending the citizens of the Jewish state. It also plays an important social, scientific and psychological role in preparing its young citizens for the challenging task of being Israelis in a difficult world.
Unprovoked attacks on Israel's borders, murdering Israeli soldiers, taking Israeli hostages and showering rockets targeting and killing Israeli civilians are not furthering any legitimate goal.
The situation in the region is flammable and may explode at any moment, because of the crucial events and because of the absence of justice in executing the international legitimacy resolutions, regarding the Israeli Arab cause and the oppression on Palestinians by Israelis.
That can be achieved by termination of Israeli occupation to the territories according to the international resolutions related, so the Palestinian State can be establish with Jerusalem as capital for such State.
We seriously suspect the agents of the Americans and Israelis in conducting such horrendous terrorist acts and cannot believe the people who kidnap Philippines nationals, for instance, or behead U.S. nationals are Muslims.
I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on.
My closest friends from Israel make fun of me for becoming an American, and my American friends make fun of how Israeli I am... I can't win.
And in this respect, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a tragedy, a clash between one very powerful, very convincing, very painful claim over this land and another no less powerful, no less convincing claim.
Nobody ever predicted, a week before President Sadat came to Jerusalem in 1977, that his arrival would be the beginning of a peace process that would end up in an - unhappy - Israeli-Egyptian peace. We have seen peace with Egypt. We have seen peace with Jordan. We have seen the handshake between Rabin and Arafat - things are possible.
Israel of the coastal plain, where eight out of ten Israeli Jews live far removed from the occupied territories, from the fiery Jerusalem, from the religious and nationalistic conflicts, is unknown to the outside world, almost unknown to itself.
The idea that all Israelis are villains is a childish idea. Israel is the most deeply divided, argumentative society. You'll never find two Israelis that agree with one another - it's hard to find even one who agrees with himself or herself.
I have seen for the first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples - the Israeli people and the Palestinian people - are ahead of their leaderships.
I wrote a novel about Israelis who live their own lives on the slope of a volcano. Near a volcano one still falls in love, one still gets jealous, one still wants a promotion, one still gossips.
I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.
I have an ambivalent feeling about the Israeli army. Growing up in Tel Aviv, being involved in the arts, the last thing artists want to do is fight.
The clarinet is not so dominant in Israeli music as it is in klezmer. I heard klezmer when I was growing up, but for some reason I avoided it. I listened to Louis Armstrong instead. But the sense of melody is the connection between jazz and klezmer.
I definitely see myself as an international musician. When I play, I respect the source of the music, whether it's Cuban, Brazilian or Israeli. I try to bring that to all of the music I play. Music has no borders and no flags.
There are a lot of Israeli musicians in New York because you want to grow and go onstage, and eventually you have to get out of Israel to do that because there aren't enough places to play.
Under Nasser, Egyptian nationalism was built on little more than pan-Arab irredentism and anti-Western and anti-Israeli sentiment. Mr. Mubarak retained these powerful brainwashers and allowed the rise of a religious component to further alienate Egyptians from liberal and democratic thinking.
One can criticize the Israeli government, but it is not fair to judge the people of Israel.
When Will and I were growing up in Los Angeles, his girlfriends were always Israeli, so we'd always be hanging out with Israelis in L.A.
I'm no more or less Jewish than any other Jew. Israel has survived because we haven't forgot our Judaism, but there are some Israelis who did forget.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
A day will come when other Israelis will be launched into space in the service of science and progress. For them and for us, Ilan Ramon will always be a source of inspiration as Israel's space pioneer, and his memory will be engraved in our hearts forever.
I was 13 when my parents moved to Israel, and I was put in a Scottish mission school. Ninety-nine percent of the children were Israeli... Suddenly, I found myself speaking the wrong language, dressed in the wrong clothes, picked up by the wrong mode of transportation - an embassy car instead of a bus.
