I have seen for the first time in 100 years of conflict, the two peoples – the Israeli people and the Palestinian people – are ahead of their leaderships.

io, mio caro, non credo nell’amore universale. L’amore esiste in dosi modiche. Si possono amare forse cinque fra uomini e donne, dieci magari, talvolta financo quindici. E anche questo solo assai di rado. Ma se...

Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right.

Activism is a Way of Life

I recommend the art of slow reading.

When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically...

Sippur al ahava vehoshekh

The evacuation of the settlements from the Gaza Strip is not just a struggle over the question of the fate of the territories. Fundamentally, it is the first great battle over the question of religion...

I was born and bred in a tiny, low-ceilinged ground-floor apartment.

ll our tongues and cultures are constant shoplifters” from other tongues and cultures.

For more than 30 years, … the settlers’ dream has overwhelmed the dream of secular Israelis. Day in and day out, the vision of Greater Israel and the reign of the Messiah crushed the hope...

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

He had the feeling that he must make a decision, and though he was used to making many decisions every day, this time he was beset with uncertainty; in fact he had no idea what...

The Jewish settlers of Gaza and in the West Bank have a dream for the future of Israel…. The settlers’ dream is to create a ‘Greater Israel’ with Jewish settlements wall-to-wall…. In such a state,...

If we don’t stop somewhere, if we don’t accept an unhappy compromise, unhappy for both sides, if we don’t learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice – if we don’t...

Memory deludes me. I have just remembered something that I completely forgot after it happened. I remembered it again when I was about sixteen, and then I forgot it again. And this morning I remembered...

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.

In many ways, I regard Sharon and Arafat as birds of a feather.

She had not wanted him to but had let him have his way because ever since she was a child she had generally yielded before anyone with strong willpower, especially if it was a man,...

All of my novels are democracies.

Israel of the coastal plain, where eight out of ten Israeli Jews live far removed from the occupied territories, from the fiery Jerusalem, from the religious and nationalistic conflicts, is unknown to the outside world,...

… that sour blend of loneliness and lust for recognition, shyness and extravagance, deep insecurity and self-intoxicated egomania, that drives poets and writers out of their rooms to seek each other out, to rub shoulders...

And in this respect, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a tragedy, a clash between one very powerful, very convincing, very painful claim over this land and another no less powerful, no less convincing claim.

It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain...

Two children of same cruel parent look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between...

But for 30 years, Orthodox leaders have tipped the balance between hawks and doves, and have been in a position to determine who forms a coalition and who runs the country.

On my parents’ scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.

I call’d the devil, and he came / And with wonder his form did I closely scan / He is not ugly, and is not lame / But really a handsome and charming man /...

But The Same Sea is set precisely in this Israel, which never makes it to the news headlines anywhere. It is a novel about everyday people far removed from fundamentalism, fanaticism nationalism, or militancy of...

One of the things I wanted to introduce in The Same Sea beyond transcending the conflict, is the fact that deep down below all our secrets are the same.

Two years ago, a sudden change occurred. Sharon’s rhetoric changed overnight.

Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.

L’amore è una faccenda intima strana e piena di contraddizioni, visto che non di rado amiamo qualcuno solo perchè amiamo noi stessi, per egoismo, avidità, desiderio fisico, brama di dominare l’oggetto d’amore e asservirlo; o...

The actual gap between Labor, Likud and the new central party is microscopic.

Literary and political work helps people to ged rid of stereotypes