A reprisal of this magnitude... has never been carried out before. I paced back and forth in my room perplexed and completely depressed, feeling helpless.
Moshe Sharett

An there is always the question: is it really proven that retaliatory actions solve the security problem?.
Moshe Sharett

Arabs respect only the language of force.
Moshe Sharett

As for now, we must not forget who would have to exchange the land? those villages which live more than others on irrigation, on orange and fruit plantations, in houses built near water wells and pumping stations, on livestock and property and easy access to markets.
Moshe Sharett

As for the future, we are equally determined to explore all possibilities of getting rid, once and for all, of the huge Arab minority which originally threatened us.
Moshe Sharett

As for the long-term future: I am prepared to see in this a vision, not a mystical way but in a realistic way, of a population exchange on a much more important scale and including larger territories.
Moshe Sharett

By the reduction of the Arabs on the one hand and Jewish immigration in the transition period on the other, we will ensure an absolute Hebrew majority in a parliamentary regime.
Moshe Sharett

Curious people who have become accustomed to think that one cannot sustain the moral of the army without giving it the freedom to shed blood from time to time.
Moshe Sharett

Even of if a certain backlash is unavoidable, we must make the most of the momentous chance with which history has presented us so swiftly and so unexpectedly.
Moshe Sharett

Fear is the main factor in Arab politics... There is no Arab who is not harmed by Jews' entry into Palestine.
Moshe Sharett

I am against intervention by a foreign power against us.
Moshe Sharett

I am against preventive war because it means measures by the UN against us.
Moshe Sharett

I explained that we would like to adjust our position on the Syrian question to theirs, as, in our view, they are the decisive factor in our relations with our neighbors, and Syria is unimportant.
Moshe Sharett

I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered.
Moshe Sharett

I imagine that the intention is to get rid of them. The interests of security demand that we get rid of them.
Moshe Sharett

I saw clearly how those who saved the state so heroically and courageously in the War of Independence would be capable of bringing a catastrophe upon it if they are given the chance in normal times.
Moshe Sharett

Israel would not do that, both because we cannot afford to be accused by the world of aggression and because we cannot, for security and social reasons, absorb in our midst a substantial Arab population.
Moshe Sharett

Once the return tide starts, it will be impossible to stem it, and it will prove our undoing.
Moshe Sharett

Our role in Israel is a pioneering one, and we need people with certain strength of fiber.
Moshe Sharett

So we need people who will remain steadfast in any hardship and who have a high degree of resistance.
Moshe Sharett