“The thing is, you cannot ask people to coexist by having one side bow their heads and rely on a solution that is only good for the other side. What you can do is stop blaming each other and engage in dialogue with one person at a time. Everyone knows that violence begets violence and breeds more hatred. We need to find our way together. I feel I cannot rely on the various spokespersons who claim they act on my behalf. Invariably they have some agenda that doesn't work for me. Instead, I talk to my patients, to my neighbors and colleagues--Jews, Arabs--and I find out they feel as I do: we are more similar than we are different, and we are all fed up with the violence.”

“People should know that Palestinians don't live for themselves alone. They live for each other. What I do for myself and my children, I also do for all my family. We are a community.”

“Anger and violence in Gaza and among Gazans is completely predictable. In a situation like ours, the absence of violence and anger would be abnormal. All of of us feel angry at least occasionally.”

“Tragedy cannot be the end of our lives. We cannot allow it to control and defeat us.”

“was our suffering of any consequence to their consciences? Did they see us as victims> Or were we simply nameless, faceless humans who were in their way?”

“How come a Palestinian child does not live like an Israeli child? Why do Palestinian children have to toil at any manner of hard jobs just to be able to go to school? How is it that when we are sick. we can't get the medical help the Israeli kids take for granted?”

“Traveling has become such a miserable experience that no Palestinian does it, except those who absolutely have to: students attending foreign universities, patients needing care unavailable in Gaza, businesspeople attempting to pretend that their world will eventually be normal.”