Arafat's Quotes

#1. Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasser Arafat's transformation from outlaw to statesman.

John F. Kerry

#2. 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

#3. Arafat's departure has created an awesome opportunity.

Joe Biden

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. Whoever stands by a just cause cannot possibly be called a terrorist.

Yasser Arafat

#10. 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

#11. I am not Mr. Chairman. I am His Excellency, the President of Palestine.

Yasser Arafat

#12. Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart.

Yasser Arafat

#13. 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

#14. Martyrs, martyrs, martyrs, ... we want a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem.

Yasser Arafat

#15. 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

#16. 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

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

Yasser Arafat

#18. Peace cannot be achieved except after the cessation of military escalation and the economic and financial siege.

Yasser Arafat

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromise.

Yasser Arafat

#23. Palestine is only a stones throw away for a small Palestinian boy or girl.

Yasser Arafat

#24. All religious wars are about people arguing over who has the biggest invisible friend.

Yasser Arafat

#25. You are the generation that will reach the sea and hoist the flag of Palestine over Tel Aviv.

Yasser Arafat

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

Oriana Fallaci

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

Mark Steyn

#28. Arafat was a barrier to peace.

Chuck Schumer

#29. 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

#30. Yasser Arafat remains in stable condition after dying in a Paris hospital.

James Taranto

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

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

Silvan Shalom

#36. [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

#37. 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

#38. 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

#39. It's always convenient for certain people to heap accusations on Israel.

Yasser Arafat

#40. The war of attrition against the Zionist enemy will never cease.

Yasser Arafat

#41. 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

#42. 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

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

Yasser Arafat

#44. 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

#45. Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you.

Yasser Arafat

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. Anyone who relinquishes a single inch of Jerusalem is neither an Arab nor a Muslim.

Yasser Arafat

#49. Find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy and the enemy of God.

Yasser Arafat

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. This is my homeland no one can kick me out.

Yasser Arafat

#53. Let us be worthy of those who pin their hopes on us. May God bless you with success.

Yasser Arafat

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

Yasser Arafat

#55. 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

#56. We will make the lives of the infidels hell - millions of martyrs marching on Jerusalem.

Yasser Arafat

#57. 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

#58. In many ways, I regard Sharon and Arafat as birds of a feather.

Amos Oz

#59. 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

#60. 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

#61. 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

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

Elliott Abrams

#63. 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

#64. I do not support peace in the Middle East. And I do not support Arafat. He is a stupid, incompetent fool!

Muammar Al-Gaddafi

#65. 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

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

Yasser Arafat

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

Elliott Abrams

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. In order to obtain the goal of returning to Palestine, all of us sometimes have to grit our teeth.

Yasser Arafat

#73. Israel must withdraw from Jerusalem so that it becomes the capital of a state of Palestine.

Yasser Arafat

#74. Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state.

Yasser Arafat

#75. The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine.

Yasser Arafat

#76. 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