The Palestinians are not going anywhere - -they have nowhere to go. The Israeli Jews also aren't going anywhere - they have nowhere to go. But we cannot become one happy family, because we are not. So, we have to divide the house into two smaller apartments and learn how to say, "good morning" in the hall every day. Eventually, perhaps we will pop in on each other for a cup of coffee. But we need this semi-detached house, a two-family unit.

A long war is degenerating - it ruins the mind and the soul and psyche of individuals and nations.

In writing a novel, the writer must be able to identify emotionally and intellectually with two or three or four contradicting perspectives and give each of them very a convincing voice. It's like playing tennis with yourself and you have to be on both sides of the yard. You have to be on both sides, or all sides if there are more than two sides.

It's possible a Palestinian state will be installed over the heads of the Palestinians. It could be part of an agreement between the Israeli government and moderate Arab states, but not one between Israel and the Palestinians.

I know one or two things about fanaticism and death, and I reject them.

Sometimes, recently Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed a clash between wrong and wrong. It is not as simple as fascism was. Every decent man had to be against fascism, period. It is not as simple as apartheid or colonialism or racism or misogyny. It is not simple because the Palestinians have no other land. They are absolutely right about this. The Israeli Jews also have no other land and they are absolutely right about this. It is a tragedy of two peoples claiming the same very small country, about the size of New Jersey.

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, almost unknown to itself.