"Building a State means for us a return to the soil. We found hundreds of Arab villages. We didn’t take them away. ... We established hundreds of new Jewish villages on new soil. ... We didn’t merely buy the land, we recreated the land. We did that in rocky hills like Motza. ... In the swamps of Hedera hundreds of Jews died of malaria, and they refused to leave that place until it was made healthy. ... We did it on the sand dunes of Rishon le-Zion. With our toil, our sweat, and with our love and devotion, we are remaking the soil to enable us to settle there, not at the expense of anybody else."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Palestine_(region)