16 Quotes by Mourid Barghouti

Pave the sea or hit your head against the wall if you wish.

And now I pass from my exile to their... homeland? My homeland? The West Bank and Gaza? The Occupied Territories? The Areas? Judea and Samaria? The Autonomous Government? Israel? Palestine? Is there any other country in the world that so perplexes you with its names?

I found myself retreating to there; to that hidden place inside each one of us, the place of silence and introspection. A dark private space in which I take refuge when the outside world becomes absurd or incomprehensible.

Who lives in this settlement? Where were they before they were brought here. Do their kids play football behind those walls? Do their men and women make love behind those windows? So they make love with guns strapped to their sides? Do they hang loaded machine guns ready on their bedroom walls?

Is it not odd that when we arrive at a new place living its new moment we start to look for our old things in it? Is there something new for strangers? Or do they go around the world looking for stains of the past?

Why does everyone in the world think that his particular situation is ‘different’? Does a man want to be different even in loss? is it an egoism that we cannot shake free of?

Statistics are meaningless. Discussions and speeches and proposals and condemnations and reasons and maps for negotiation and the excuses of negotiators and all we have heard and read about the settlements, all this is worth nothing.