“I feel that Sharon is certainly a negative addition. He will sour the atmosphere. He will shift the whole terrain of the discourse to the extreme right.”
“Beyond the emotionalism and the obvious sense of relief on all sides, I think that there is a recognition that reality may intrude, that perhaps the steps ahead and the days ahead are going to be much more difficult than one expects.”
“We cannot superimpose on any conflict very simple, borrowed and ready-made solutions ... The Americans constructed a simplistic paradigm for our peace process. And they expected everybody to think like Americans, to behave like Americans.”
“It's very clear, that while they want to shell and pound and kill and destroy Palestinian people and their institutions with total impunity, that [while] putting enormous pressure on the Palestinians, on their victims, to calm things down and not to respond and not to react,”
“Dennis Ross has to be very careful if he wants to adopt the Israel priorities and the Israel discourse, and really fall prey to this deliberate campaign of fabrications of false accusations that Israel has started, and they continue to use.”
“has been unable to effect any change in the Israeli attitude. We did not see any effective political will from Dennis Ross ... to hold Israel accountable.”
“Now it depends on whether he wants to rely on the extreme hard-line, right-wing, ideological, even fundamentalist elements in Israeli society. Or does he want to rely on the 50 percent or more who are committed to peace?”
