Elliott Abrams Israel Quotations

There's been an Israeli position, which is 'We love Mubarak,' that permeates their whole society, the political class. That certainly differs from many of us in the pro-Israel camp in the United States.

The Egyptian military and the government of Israel have long had a common interest in maintaining order and fighting terrorism in Sinai.

Rahm Emanuel seems to think he knows Israel very well, and that the way to treat that country and its democratically-elected government is the way he treats all opponents in politics: by attacking and attacking.

Can Israelis be wistful? It is not the characteristic we usually associate with them; more typically they are said to be tough, sweet, angry, thoughtful, demanding - not wistful.

One good way of measuring the mood in Israel is just how alert or relaxed the guards at every restaurant entrance appear to be.

Every Israeli government since 1967, of left or right, has asserted that Jerusalem is Israel's capital and has allowed Israeli Jews to build there.

The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home.

Israel will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel left there.

Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. What the Syrians did in response, nothing. Israel has killed a number of terrorist leaders in Syria. Response? Nothing.

Israel and the Palestinians had been at the table together for decades until the Obama/Mitchell/Rahm Emanuel decision to demand a total end to Israeli construction froze not the settlements but the diplomacy.

Israel's flexibility is dependent on its sense of security.

Pessimism is rife in Israel.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.

At the United Nations, a lynch mob for Israel is always just a moment away.

We use American influence with Israel not to promote economic growth in the West Bank, but to try and impede Jewish - never Arab - construction in the capital city.

The United States should encourage Israel to take further steps to improve the Palestinian economy.

The truce brokered by Egypt between Israel and Hamas depends, above all, on the borders between Egypt, Gaza and Israel.

While Israelis do not care too much about Europeans moral judgments, the E.U. is an important market for them, and European sanctions of any kind would be harmful to Israel.

On taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama put Israeli settlements at the center of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

At Camp David in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat 94 percent of the West Bank; ten years later, Ehud Olmert offered Abbas 93.6 percent with a one-to-one land swap.

In the spring of 2007, Israeli intelligence brought to Washington proof that the Assad regime in Syria was building a nuclear reactor along the Euphrates - with North Korean help. This reactor was a copy of the Yongbyon reactor the North Koreans had built, and was part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program.