When I became leader I made very clear I was not going to choose the easy life. I have always taken risks. I don't like comfort-zone politics.

The country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We have to offer an alternative vision.

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss in the Republican Party he is a leader.

So poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.

Too often in the past U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks.

I enter negotiations with Chairman Arafat the leader of the PLO the representative of the Palestinian people with the purpose to have coexistence between our two entities Israel as a Jewish state and Palestinian state entity next to us living in peace.

On the other hand if the free world is concerned with how a new Palestinian leader governs then the peace process will have a real chance to succeed.

That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.

Many African leaders refuse to send their troops on peace keeping missions abroad because they probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations.