Renowned Israeli writer David Grossman says he refuses to abandon hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace, saying “it humiliates me as a person to despair. To give up. To say ‘nothing can be done; that’s how they are; they’re animals; we can never make a deal with them.’ I don’t believe that.”
“When you say you’ve despaired you’re saying you’re a victim. I’m not prepared to be a victim,” he tells Channel 2.
While Grossman, who lost his son Uri in combat during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, admits that the Palestinians ‘don’t like us,’ adding that Israel has not given them much cause to feel differently, he insists that pragmatic forces and interests are strong enough to enable the two peoples to live together.
“I want to have discourse with them. I want my prime minister to find a way to release us from this neverending cycle, this cycle of blood,'” he says.
“We are such a strong nation. I want us to use our incredible strength to reach a new place,” he adds.
Israeli author David Grossman (photo credit: CC BY-SA torre.elena, Flickr)
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From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
