Israel's willingness to cooperate closely with the U.S. in protecting American interests in the region altered her image in the eyes of many officials in Washington.

We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.

I have been interested in the 12th century since my 20s when it was very fashionable to say of anybody with whom you disagreed, which was basically anybody over the age of 30, "One of the great minds of the 12th century", and one day I thought, "I don't know anything about the 12 century." So I started buying books, reading about it, and I discovered it was a period of great flowering, it was a Renaissance before what we think is the Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance of the 16th century.

I'll continue to carry out whatever we are committed to. Whatever we believe leads us to a permanent solution the way we want it, the way I want it.

You have got to sit down and talk to people. You can't understand people from a distance.

We appreciate the efforts of the United States, of the president, of the secretary of state, and we are ready to find any form of talks, but we have to overcome the differences between Syria and Israel to reach peace.

Steps toward a rapprochement between Israel and the Arab states create a process that turns economics into the moving force that shapes the regional relations instead of nationalist interests that were dominant in the past.