page_title: Natan Sharansky
section_title: Political views
hierarchical_section_title: Natan Sharansky / Political views
caption_attribution_description: English: THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW. President Vladimir Putin with Knesset Member and Co-Chairman of the Russian-Israeli Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation Natan Sharansky.Русский: МОСКВА, КРЕМЛЬ. С депутатом кнессета, сопредседателем Российско-израильской комиссии по торгово-экономическому сотрудничеству Натаном Щаранским.
context_page_description: Natan Sharansky is an Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He served as Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018. Natan Sharansky currently serves as the Chairman of the Institute of the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.
context_section_description: Sharansky has argued that there can never be peace between Israel and the Palestinians until there is "the building of real democratic institutions in the fledgling Palestinian society, no matter how tempting a 'solution' without them may be." In a Haaretz interview, he maintained the following:
  Jews came here 3,000 years ago and this is the cradle of Jewish civilization. Jews are the only people in history who kept their loyalty to their identity and their land throughout the 2,000 years of exile, and no doubt that they have the right to have their place among nations—not only historically but also geographically. As to the Palestinians, who are the descendants of those Arabs who migrated in the last 200 years, they have the right, if they want, to have their own state ... but not at the expense of the state of Israel.
  In the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011, he told Moment Magazine, "To sign an agreement you must have a partner who is dependent on the well-being of his people, which is what democracy means."
caption: Sharansky and Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, 19 September 2000
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