M. B. - Barak's very generous offer essentially represented Israeli forgiveness for 3 decades of vicious Arab aggression and terrorism

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel.... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours ... When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle." -- Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan (Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 4/13/83, NYTimes 4/14/83)

"In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force."
--Professor Ben-Zion Dinur Israel's First Minister of Education, 1954 from History of the Haganah

"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple." -- Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.

"Without them [the settlements] the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population." -- Defense Minister Moshe Dayan (quoted in Geoffrey Aronson's Settlements and the Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, Institute for Palestinian Studies.)

Israel rejects the Mitchell report call for a freeze on growth of settlements
Dilip Hiro Tuesday May 22, 2001 The Guardian
Behind the drama of shootings, stone throwing, fighter attacks, tank incursions, and razing of houses and orchards - that have attracted the world's attention in the eight-month low-intensity Israeli-Palestinian warfare - lies something undramatic: land.
That is, the unceasing, illegal seizure of Palestinian land by Israel in train for the past 34 years, which has created 200 Jewish settlements, including 13 in Arab East Jerusalem, with 400,000 residents.

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