Arafat & Friends in Their Own Words

"Find whatever strength you have to terrorize your enemy."
Arafat, in a speech to Palestinians May 16, 2004

"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."
Arafat, on Palestinian Authority Television, Jan. 15, 2002

"I have told my husband that if he denies women equality, I will be in the vanguard of women on the streets, protesting outside his office in the new Palestinian state."
Suha Tawil Arafat, Palestinian feminist and Arafat's wife, quoted in the New Yorker in 1994. [Suha has spent the last three years of her life in Paris.]

"This is a peace agreement. This isn't a remake of 'Rio Bravo.'"
President Bill Clinton before the White House signing of the 1993 peace agreement, telling Arafat he could not wear a gun at the ceremony

"A very moderate person struggling against almost insurmountable odds to hold disparate groups of Palestinians together."
Former President Jimmy Carter, speaking of Arafat in 1993

"Whoever thinks of stopping the uprising before it achieves its goals, I will give him 10 bullets in the chest."
Arafat, speaking of the first intifada in 1989

"Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart."
Arafat, in a Time magazine interview, November 1974

– Quotes compiled by Knight Ridder

Arafat and Friends in Their Own Words