80 Quotes by Ismail Haniyeh

The great Palestinian people should not be punished for choosing their leadership in free and democratic elections. Those who believe that economic pressures will force our government into submission are wrong.

We came to say, the Quran is our constitution, we are committed to God and his holy book. God willing, should they try to carry out their crime against the Quran, God will tear their state apart and they will become God’s lesson to anyone who tries to desecrate the holy book.

Getting rid of Bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods – the violent methods – that were created and encouraged by Bin Laden and others in the world.

The victory of Hamas is not only based on the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has a vision and a program, and this is the reason why the Palestinian people chose Hamas. However, there is no doubt that the corruption helped Hamas’s victory.

Doesn’t the world see the suffering of millions of Palestinians who have been living in exile around the world or in refugee camps for the past 60 years? No state, no home, no identity, no right to work. Doesn’t the world see this injustice?

We don’t have a state, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank. Gaza is under siege and the West Bank is occupied. What we have in the Gaza Strip is not a state, but rather a regime of an elected government. A Palestinian state will not be created at this time except in the territories of 1967.

The Palestinian people do not beg the world for a state, and the state can’t be created through decisions and initiatives. States liberate their land first and then the political body can be established.

Tens of thousands have been killed or wounded by the Israeli army since 1967. During 2006, the number of Palestinians killed reached 650. Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel – about 40% of the male population.