Yitzhak Rabin Quotes

Yitzhak Rabin offers blunt reflections on war and peace, for those curious about history's tough choices.

18 quotes

1. We did not think that [Egyptian President] Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to Sinai on May 14 would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.

2. Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.

3. I, Military I.D. No. 30743, Retired General in the Israeli Defense Forces, consider myself to be a soldier in the army of peace today.

4. I, who served my country for 27 years as a soldier, I say to you, Your Majesty, the King of Jordan, and I say to you, our American friends: Today we are embarking on a battle which has no dead and no wounded, no blood and no anguish. This is the only battle which is a pleasure to wage: the battle of peace.

5. You can only make peace with your enemies.

6. ...in our tradition there is a saying that what is a Jewish sport? And the saying is,

7. Lebanon is a Syrian protectorate. The Lebanese dare not do anything without the approval of Damascus.

8. I'll continue to carry out whatever we are committed to. Whatever we believe leads us to a permanent solution the way we want it, the way I want it.

9. I don't see any reason to discriminate against homosexuals.

10. Israel has an important principle: It is only Israel that is responsible for our security.

11. Peace is not made with friends. Peace is made with enemies.

12. A couple of things are missing from Indigenous affairs. We tend to go and process, we tend to spend a lot of money for very limited outcomes, and we have got to change that.

13. I don't believe that in the name of the holiness of the city you have to put barbed wires, machine gun nests, mine pins and everything of that, in the name of the holiness of Jerusalem.

14. [Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat.

15. 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.

16. It is not worth the paper it is written on unless it is backed by the kind of force that will make the other side consider the penalties too heavy to break the agreement.

17. We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!

18. It is our duty, to ourselves and to our children, to see the new world as it is now.