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" Whether we agree with them or not, politicians aren't for trusting. They are for getting done what can be done to make really horrible problems into plain old lousy problems. "

Ian Lustick

Old

Politicians

Problems

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" As long as Hamas needs the support it could conceivably get from the international community through the Palestinian Authority, it has an interest in playing nice with Fatah. And Fatah has an interest in playing nice with Hamas because it needs some source of legitimacy on the West Bank. "

" The fact is that democracy anywhere in the world, including in the United States, is not something that comes easy. And yet, we are committed to it, and equality and democracy are the only ways in the long run that Jews will be safe in the Middle East. "

" There's a good lesson for policymakers: It's not the presence of the U.S. that is a problem for many people in the Arab region; it's the type of presence we bring. "

" If you put too much pressure on the Palestinian Authority, it will collapse - it will disappear - and Israel will have to formally re-occupy the West Bank and assume responsibility for the Palestinians there. The United States doesn't want that. Israel doesn't really want that. "

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" What we have really now is a one-state outcome in which Israel is the one and only state between the Jordan River and the sea. It can do whatever it wants virtually throughout the area. But that's not the kind of a state that's going to be a basis for peace and stability in the region. "

" Most Israelis have a sense, 'We just don't want to live in the Middle East anymore. We don't want it to be the Middle East. Were going to just build a wall or operate unilaterally' - not try to even use force as used to be the case to convince Arabs to accept Israel by convincing them that Israel is here to stay and then negotiating. "

Ian Lustick

Want

Build

" Strong Islamist trends make a fundamentalist Palestine more likely than a small state under a secular government. "

Ian Lustick

Government

Small

" International peace and security depend on certain taboos that are easily recognized when they are broken. It can be more important for an intervention to take place because nuclear or chemical or biological weapons are used as opposed to just measuring how many people are killed. "