Ido's mother is the only person with whom Ada can really laugh out loud, the way you can laugh with someone who has known you since childhood. - Shulamith Hareven

Anyone who wants to maintain the current situation, the so-called status quo, lays the groundwork for the next war. In fact, the term "status quo" is only part of the phrase "status quo ante bellum": the situation as it was before the war. There are no static situations in the world, least of all in the roiling Middle East. Anyone who thinks it is possible to arrive at peace through continued force-without accords, without rules, avoiding the determination of new and secure borders-misleads people. Anyone who thinks the policy of "nary an inch" will bring about an accord is a deceiver. No one will come to talk to him seriously.

Wherever a great promise is not and cannot be fulfilled, the resultant empty space is filled in by fantasy. Such is the case with leaders and followers, with parents and children, and between spouses; who knows better than psychologists or writers how difficult it is, then, to confront that fantasy with reality.

I am a Levantine because I see war as the total failure of common sense, an execrable last resort. And because I am a Levantine, all fundamentalists on all sides, from Khomeini to Kahane, will always want to destroy me and all Levantines like me, here and in the neighboring