Quotes & Sayings About Arafat

Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state. — Yasser Arafat

We completely condemn this very dangerous attack, and I convey my condolences to the American people, to the American president and to the American administration, not only in my name, but on behalf of the Palestinian people. — Yasser Arafat

Jordan recognizes that east Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state and Jordan rejects foreign sovereignty
Israeli sovereignty
over the holy sites — Yasser Arafat

Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel. — Yasser Arafat

Palestinians no longer blamed Yasser Arafat or Hamas for their troubles. Now they blamed the Israelis for killing their children. But I still couldn't escape a fundamental question: Why were those children out there in the first place? Where were the parents? Why didn't their mothers and fathers keep them inside? Those children should have been sitting at their desks in school, not running in the streets throwing stones at armed soldiers. — Mosab Hassan Yousef

The Palestinian state is within our grasp. Soon the Palestinian flag will fly on the walls, the minarets and the cathedrals of Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

War is something Arafat sends others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton's mediation. — Oriana Fallaci

the essence of the Hajj is Arafat. On the ninth day of the Hajj month all pilgrims gather on the great Plain of Arafat to offer their deepest heartfelt prayers. It's a reminder of Resurrection, when everyone will stand "naked" before God on Judgement Day and nothing counts but our actions and their effects upon our soul'. — Kristiane Backer

Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations. — Yasser Arafat

I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. — Yasser Arafat

I want to tell Carter and Begin that when the Arabs set off their volcano there will be only Arabs in this part of the world ... Our people will continue to fuel the torch of the revolution with rivers of blood until the whole of the occupied homeland is liberated, the whole of the homeland is liberated, not just a part of it. — Yasser Arafat

Well, the right-wing policy with regard to Israel - the people who don't want to deal with Arafat, who don't want a Palestinian state - the whole sort of right-wing view is consistent with the view toward Iraq. It's the same policy and the same people. — Chris Matthews

In my view, Arafat is the only Palestinian in the world that isn't willing to have an independent Palestinian state. — Silvan Shalom

All our moves are based on four general principles: continued use of the rifle, no waiving of historical rights, no peace, and no negotiations ... Whatever form of government is established in the territory when the shadow of occupation passes away, whenever I address my fighters and revolutionaries, I shall say: 'Let our rifles be aimed at the beloved land, the land of the homeland, the land of Palestine — Yasser Arafat

I had taken office during a raging intifada, with Yasser Arafat running the Palestinian Authority, Israeli leaders committed to a Greater Israel policy, and Arab nations complaining from the sidelines. By the time I left, the Palestinians had a president and prime minister who rejected terrorism. The Israelis had withdrawn from some settlements and supported a two-state solution. And Arab nations were playing an active role in the peace process. — George W. Bush

It's always convenient for certain people to heap accusations on Israel. — Yasser Arafat

I have been writing about Hillary Clinton, I just actually looked this up, since 1998 when she was busy standing by when Suha Arafat was launching anti-Semitic tirades against Israel and the Jews. — Bret Stephens

Palestine is only a stones throw away for a small Palestinian boy or girl. — Yasser Arafat

We will not bend or fail until the blood of every last Jew from the youngest child to the oldest elder is spilt to redeem our land! — Yasser Arafat

Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart. — Yasser Arafat

With hearts that believe in Allah's will and predetermination, we have received the news about the martyrdom of the martyr ... Al-Hotary, the son of Palestine, whose noble soul ascended to ... in order to rest in Allah's Kingdom, together with the Prophets, the men of virtue, and the martyrs. The heroic martyrdom operation ... who turned his body into bombs ... the model of manhood and sacrifice for the sake of Allah and the homeland. — Yasser Arafat

The Israelis are mistaken if they think we do not have an alternative to negotiations. By Allah I swear they are wrong. The Palestinian people are prepared to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl so that the Palestinian flag will be flown over the walls, the churches and the mosques of Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

In order to obtain the goal of returning to Palestine, all of us sometimes have to grit our teeth. — Yasser Arafat

In the Bill Clinton years, the foreign leader who visited the White House most often was Yasser Arafat - 13 times. — Elliott Abrams

Our law is a Jordanian law that we inherited, which applies to both the West Bank and Gaza, and sets the death penalty for those who sell land to Israelis. — Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat remains in stable condition after dying in a Paris hospital. — James Taranto

We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

We shall never stop until we can go back home and Israel is destroyed ... The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromises or mediations ... the goal of this violence is the elimination of Zionism from Palestine in all its political, economic and military aspects ... We don't want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel's destruction and nothing else. — Yasser Arafat

Our basic aim is to liberate the land from the Mediterranean Seas to the Jordan River. We are not concerned with what took place in June 1967 or in eliminating the consequences of the June war. The Palestinian revolution's basic concern is the uprooting of the Zionist entity from our land and liberating it. — Yasser Arafat

We do not want to destroy any people. It is precisely because we have been advocating coexistence that we have shed so much blood. — Yasser Arafat

There is something very consistent about governance in the Arab world. Among the Arab countries today in which there is a modicum of internal stability, each is controlled by an Arafat-type figure - an anti-democratic strongman who is able to crush all challenges to his authority. Likewise, among those Arab countries that aren't ruled by a despot, the political dynamic is also consistent: In Lebanon, Iraq, and now Gaza, sectarian violence is the dominant form of political expression. — Michael Totten

[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat. — Yitzhak Rabin

People - whether you like to hear what people have got to say, not you have got to listen to them, and turning your back on people I found very insulting. If you're going to really make peace, you have got to confront each other and look each other in the eye, and that's what's happen - I'm always remember Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat and the reluctance in - Yasser Arafat put his hand down and the reluctance of Yitzhak Rabin, but then he had that second and then he just shook the hand. — Warren Mundine

This child, who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a martyr? We are proud of them. — Yasser Arafat

Whoever thinks of stopping the uprising before it achieves its goals, I will give him ten bullets in the chest. — Yasser Arafat

Israel was seen as having demonstrated unmistakably it wanted peace, and the reason it wasn't available, achievable was because Arafat wouldn't accept it. — Dennis Ross

On Egyptian television during a 2010 talk show, a Muslim cleric, Sa'd Arafat, reviewed the rules for beating one's wife. He began by saying, "Allah honored wives by installing the punishment of beating."21 Beating, he explained, was a legitimate punishment if a husband did not receive sexual satisfaction from his wife. But he added: "There is a beating etiquette." Beatings must avoid the face because they should not make a wife ugly. They must be done at chest level. He recommended using a short rod. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Martyrs, martyrs, martyrs, ... we want a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

Peace cannot be achieved except after the cessation of military escalation and the economic and financial siege. — Yasser Arafat

Politics is a dynamic process. When I was a young man in the 1970s, Yasser Arafat had just perpetrated various terrorist attacks. Just a few years later, after I had entered European Parliament, the same Yasser Arafat was given the Nobel Peace Prize. — Martin Schulz

The PLO was founded three years before the Israelis ever occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and that the PLO wanted Israel wiped off the map. But in a ninety-second story, who has time to remind viewers that when the PLO was founded, Gaza was illegally occupied by Egypt, and the West Bank by Jordan, but Yasser Arafat did not mind those occupations? Where were the voices of the Palestinians then for their independent state? — Brigitte Gabriel

I am not Mr. Chairman. I am His Excellency, the President of Palestine. — Yasser Arafat

We will make the lives of the infidels hell - millions of martyrs marching on Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

In September 1993, President Clinton presided over a handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn - the climax of a 'day of awe,' as the press described it. — Noam Chomsky

I am convinced that our people are now on the way to establishing a Palestinian state. The agreement signed in Cairo is the first step in establishing the state, and therefore it should be implemented. — Yasser Arafat

The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine. — Yasser Arafat

I remember when I was in the Middle East, Yasser Arafat used to go to Bahrain and Qatar on a Thursday and then go to Saudi Arabia and get his financial help on a Saturday. — Leon Charney

Arafat's whole life has been governed by struggle and a cause. Everything he has done as leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open, never close a door. — Dennis Ross

I also do not believe that the United States can let itself be driven into a political role by escalating terrorism, and therefore, the leaders of the Arab world and Arafat should do their utmost to put an end to this and then the United States should do its utmost to produce a political solution. — Henry A. Kissinger

Cervantes told me history is the mother of truth.
Borges told me historical truth is not what took place; it is what we think took place.
So Billy Shakespeare was queer.
Ronnie was the greatest president in history, right up there on Mount Rushmore.
AIDS is mankind's greatest plague.
Israel only kills terrorists.
America never bombed Lebanon.
Jesus was straight. Juda and he were just friends.
Roseanne's parents molested her as an infant.
Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat deserved their Nobels.
And Gaetan Dugas started the AIDS epidemic. — Rabih Alameddine

Ask Bill Clinton about Yasir Arafat. Clinton and Barak did everything they could in 2000 at Camp David. Arafat walked away from it. — Peter T. King

First of all, Arafat is wrong. Jerusalem is Israel's capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, the capital of the Jewish people, for ever and ever. — Benjamin Netanyahu

This sympathy is not translated into force against the British government because it is not like the anti- apartheid movement which had a high profile here and Mandela is a more engaging figure than Yasser Arafat. — Tom Paulin

This is my homeland no one can kick me out. — Yasser Arafat

The war of attrition against the Zionist enemy will never cease. — Yasser Arafat

Like Mahmoud Abbas. He is not gaining anything. He puts conditions and Israel ignores them. Israel doesn't give him any hint that they will accept a single one of his conditions. Let me tell you. Arafat went to Oslo and signed [the agreement]. What did Israel do? They confined him in Muqata in one room and killed him. — Leila Khaled

Even if only one guerilla cub survives the prolonged struggle, I am confident that he will raise the flag of Palestine overJerusalem ... Jerusalem is destined to be the eternal capital of our sovereign, independent Palestinian state under the P.L.O. leadership. — Yasser Arafat

Whoever stands by a just cause cannot possibly be called a terrorist. — Yasser Arafat

Arafat's departure has created an awesome opportunity. — Joe Biden

Arafat rejected the deal because, as a dictator who had directed all his energies toward strengthening the Palestinians hatred toward Israel, Arafat could not afford to make peace. — Natan Sharansky

What Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories. — Yasser Arafat

They are an American Delegation who are doing a tour of the region to apologize for the crusades', said Arafat. Then he, and his guest, burst out laughing. They both knew that America had little or no involvement in the wars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. But Arafat, at any rate, was happy to indulge the affliction of anyone who believed they had and use it to his own political advantage. — Douglas Murray

Arafat was a barrier to peace. — Chuck Schumer

The central premise behind Oslo was that if Arafat were given enough legitimacy, territory, weapons and money, he would use his power to fight terror and make peace with Israel. — Natan Sharansky

The Palestinian people have no national identity.
I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel. — Yasser Arafat

I send my condolences, and the condolences of the Palestinian people to American President Bush and his government and to the American people for this terrible act ... We completely condemn this serious operation ... We were completely shocked ... It's unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. — Yasser Arafat

Arafat had said that the womb of the Palestinian woman was a "biological weapon," which he could use to create Palestine state by crowding people into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. — Yasser Arafat

The Palestinian Rifle is ready and we will aim it if they try to prevent us from praying in Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

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. — Yitzhak Rabin

Terrorism exploded after the Camp David talks broke down in 2000 because the Palestinians' leader at the time, Yasser Arafat, supported it. — Elliott Abrams

Find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God. — Yasser Arafat

There's a lot of egos in these countries, like the French, the Germans, et cetera, and so they keep funding and rehabilitating Yasser Arafat. — Leon Charney

We are a people with no army, no navy, no air force, no arms. It's people, thousands of people, who are feeling, sensing the sense of urgency, fearing for the president of their life - the life of their president, trying to protect their democratic choice, because Arafat is the elected leader of the Palestinian people. — Saeb Erekat

I swear to God, I will see [the Palestinian state], whether as a martyr or alive. Please, God, give me the honor of becoming a martyr in the fight for Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

The principal sponsors of the terrorists are not religious fanatics. "Palestine's Yasser Arafat, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and Syria's Assad family have made themselves the icons of Islamism despite the fact that they are well-known atheists who live un-Muslim lives and have persecuted unto death the Muslim movements in their countries." — William F. Buckley Jr.

Israel must withdraw from Jerusalem so that it becomes the capital of a state of Palestine. — Yasser Arafat

Arafat contradicts himself every five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if you ask him what time it is. — Oriana Fallaci

At Camp David in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat 94 percent of the West Bank; ten years later, Ehud Olmert offered Abbas 93.6 percent with a one-to-one land swap. — Elliott Abrams

All religious wars are about people arguing over who has the biggest invisible friend. — Yasser Arafat

It's not that I place less value on Palestinian lives, but that Chairman Arafat and his chums in Hamas do. — Mark Steyn

It is not surprising, then, that in the decade since Oslo began, Arafat used all the resources placed at his disposal to fan the flames of hatred against Israel. — Natan Sharansky

The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromise. — Yasser Arafat

You are the generation that will reach the sea and hoist the flag of Palestine over Tel Aviv. — Yasser Arafat

Anyone who relinquishes a single inch of Jerusalem is neither an Arab nor a Muslim. — Yasser Arafat

Hamas, the opponents of Arafat, the opponents of peace, urged a boycott of the election, and yet there was an 85 percent turnout where Hamas is supposed to be strong. Isn't that really quite incredible? — Warren Christopher

Since that time, Muslims have quoted the "Quraysh Model" as justification for deceptive treaties. This model means: "Negotiate 'peace' with your enemy until you become strong enough to annihilate him." This is the justification Chairman Yasser Arafat quoted in Arabic to the Muslim world when he signed the Oslo Agreement. Muslims believe that no infidels really understand what the Quraysh Model means - and for the vast majority of non-Muslims, that is a correct assumption. — Hal Lindsey

In many ways, I regard Sharon and Arafat as birds of a feather. — Amos Oz

I do not support peace in the Middle East. And I do not support Arafat. He is a stupid, incompetent fool! — Muammar Al-Gaddafi

Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman. — John F. Kerry

Let us be worthy of those who pin their hopes on us. May God bless you with success. — Yasser Arafat

Be certain that Yasser Arafat's final days are numbered, but allow us to finish him off our way, not yours. And be sure as well that ... the promises I made in front of President Bush, I will give my life to keep. — Mohammed Dahlan

Khomeini was not a puppet like Arafat or Qaddafi or the many other dictators I met in the Islamic world. He was a sort of Pope, a sort of king - a real leader. — Oriana Fallaci

But Arafat's devotion was to the Palestinian cause and not to the Palestinian people. [...] As a result, Arafat delayed the conflict's solution, leaving a legacy of avoidable disaster and unnecessary suffering. — Barry Rubin

Unfortunately, little attention was paid to how Arafat ruled. In fact, some saw the harsh and repressive nature of Arafat's regime as actually bolstering the prospects for peace. — Natan Sharansky

Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you. — Yasser Arafat