Quotes By King Abdullah II

If everybody is happy, then something is wrong with the democratic process.

I'm just very wary that once you start military operations in any country, it's very difficult to predict what the outcome is.

Is Israel going to continue to be 'Fortress Israel'? Or, as we all hope, become accepted into the neighborhood, which I believe is the only way we can move forward in harmony.

No matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

Mr. President, prime ministers, let us have ambitions: ambitions to move beyond the violence and occupation, to the day when two states, Palestine and Israel, can live together side by side in peace and security.

The Middle East has the highest unemployment percentage of any region in the world we have the largest youth cohort of history coming into the market place that frustration does translate into the political sphere when people are hungry and without jobs.

The Arab Spring I think we will look back whether it's two years, five years, ten or fifteen. And say it's a good thing.

Our response has been, 'Well, let's then make an effort to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to sit around the table.' That hasn't happened. So we only have ourselves to blame for this crisis.

The security and the future of Jordan is hand-in-hand with the future of the Palestinians and the Israelis.

I think it's almost impossible for any expert to predict for the rapid changes we see in the Middle East. They are rapid and they will continue for quite a while.

Blowing up buses will not induce the Israelis to move forward, and neither will the killing of Palestinians or the demolition of their homes and their future. All this needs to stop. And we pledge that Jordan will do its utmost to help achieve it.

When you get billions in aid and your weapons resupplied and your ammunition stock resupplied, you don't learn the lesson that war is bad and nobody wins.

Peace with Israel is a strategic imperative for Jordan.

I'm not the type of person that is forced.

If you believe that the killing of innocent people is right, then you are not part of my future.

Today more than ever we need creative minds to address the issues of the age. And one of the most urgent is this: How can humanity know so much, achieve so much, and still fail so many people so badly?

I believe nuclear energy in Jordan will be done in such a way where it is a public-private partnership so everyone can see exactly what's going on.

Remember you don't do anything in isolation.

Chemical weapons are something that scares everybody.

Fifty-seven countries in the world, a third of the United Nations, do not recognize Israel. In a way, I think North Korea has better international relations than Israel.

You're always going to have extremists in every religion.

I look at Jerusalem as being a beacon for the three monotheistic religions.

If you look at military and intelligence positions from the 1950s, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been against American national interests.

Many occasions I've sat down with Israelis to say, where do you see your country in 10 years time, and work me back, so we can figure out the synergies and the connections between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. No Israeli has ever been able to answer that question.

There is a tendency by a lot of officials to hide behind the king. And it's about time that officials take their responsibility and are responsible in front of the people.

And as an American colleague said to me several months ago, he said, 'I think the challenge in Jordan - and, again, this is for the rest of the Middle East - we need to define what center is. And once we can define what center is to a Jordanian, then we can decide what's left and what's right of that.

Wikileaks didn't help confidence with American administrations because of conversations made public so easily.

My view is when you use violence on your people, that never ends well.

I don't think the Middle East could afford another war.

I'm easily entertained.