All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of the Mediterranean littoral (god having apparently ordered Moses to lead the Jews to one of the very few parts of the region with absolutely no oil at all), that would be bad enough. But in addition, it involved roosting on top of an ever-growing population that did not welcome the newcomers. . Christopher Hitchens
About This Quote

In his autobiography, "I Shall Destroy You: The Real Story of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre," Elie Weisel wrote: "I shall never forget these words uttered by a priest in one of the churches we had tried to convert during our trip. 'It is all right for you Jews to come to this area. You have nothing to do here yourselves. But if you think you can stay here, you are wrong.

If there was a state of Israel on [the] ruins [of] many [other] Arab [villages], then I would be right in saying that this land belongs to you. However, the land of Israel belongs to us Arabs. We have lived here for more than five thousand years and we shall die here …' It was a hard truth but it was the truth."

Source: Hitch22: A Memoir

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