When I grew up, there was Hebrew literature on the curriculum, and only a bit of Arabic-but certainly no Palestinian literature. They didn't speak ab… - Salman Natour

I was born in 1949, into a war, and started school in 1956, the year of the Suez War. I finished high school in 1967 during the Six-Day War, married in 1973, the year of the Yom Kippur War. My first child was born in the middle of the 1970s, when war was raging in Lebanon; my second child was born in 1982, when Israel annihilated Beirut with bombs, and my father died during the Gulf War. My whole life is mapped out by wars. When I talk to my Israeli peers, they say, 'It's the same with me.' And I say, 'But is that a good thing? Or should we do something about it?' I'm trying to fight against all this, so that my children's lives and the lives of my grandchildren are not always described by wars.'

I know that all Israelis say that if the refugees are given the right to return, it spells the end of Israel...The point is that they think like colonials. Because they came here and took another people's land by force, they think that the return of the Palestinians will inevitably mean that they themselves are chased out and that the Palestinians will take over the whole land. But we cannot ignore the fact that the refugees are an Israeli problem, and not a Palestinian one. The Palestinians have the right to return, this is their home and country. Everyone is of course aware of the problems connected with coming back, but that is the next step. The first step has to be that Israel recognizes this right. Then we can discuss the practical solutions with each family.

a thief's feeling of guilt lies deep in the Israeli psyche. Many of them know that they are guilty. The politicians and military cannot allow themselves to say or feel that they are in any way at fault, of course, but now and then a writer feels it. And they deal with this feeling in one of two ways: either they try to repress it, or they try to find a solution. Every so often, Israeli writers try to make contact and protest against the occupation. The problem is that they seldom talk about al-Nakba and their responsibility for what happened in 1948...That is the reason why they don't want to let the 1948 refugees back, because then they will have to admit that they have been lying the whole time. Because the official version has always been that the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily. It is a psychological and moral problem...What I try to tell the Jews is that they can ask me, as a Palestinian, to help them solve their guilt problem. I don't want them, or us, to carry on suffering.