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"I am not Mr. Chairman. I am His Excellency, the President of Palestine."
- Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the P.L.O., in response to a greeting by Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt (JerusalemPost, 17 December 1993)
"Kill a settler every day.... Shoot at settlers everywhere.... Woe to you if you let them reach their homes safely or travel safely on the roads.... I want you to kill as many settlers as possible.... Do not pay attention to what I say to the media, the television or public appearances. Pay attention only to the written instructions that you receive from me."
- Yasser Arafat, addressing his people at a public event, July 2001
"I am ready to kill for the sake of my cause; wouldn't I lie for it?"
- Yasser Arafat
"We with the help of God will meet next time in Jerusalem, because we are fighting in order to bring the victory to our prophets, every baby, every child, every man, every woman, and every older person, and all the youngsters, we will sacrifice ourselves for our holy places, and we will establish the guard on them, and are prepared to give 70 of our martyrs for every martyr of theirs in this campaign, because this is our holy land. We will continue to fight..."
- Yasser Arafat, 18 December 2001, in a speech in Ramallah (reported in Ma'ariv, , English translation at http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=9345), two days after his "historical" speech, in which he called--in Arabic (under European pressure)--for an end to suicide bombings and for a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel
"There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."
- Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, to the Peel Commission, 1937
"Palestine was part of the Province of Syria... politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity."
- The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted this in a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."
- Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, to the UN Security Council
"You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people."
- Syrian President Hafez Assad to PLO leader Yassir Arafat.
"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity.... yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel."
- Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council (Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977)
"The interesting thing about "Palestinians" is that so few of the West Bank Arabs thought of themselves as such before 1967. It post-dates the founding of the PLO: Palestine had a national liberation movement before it had a nationality. Likewise, because the Arab League designated Yasser Arafat as a head of state, we've spent 30 years trying to create a state for him to be head of. Most Arab nationalities -- "Jordanian," "Iraqi" -- were invented by the British Colonial Office in the Twenties, and, although those languid Etonians came up with some evocative and colourful names for their hastily concocted jurisdictions, for the most part they're comprehensive failures as nation states. It hardly seems worth adding another bogus polity to the list."
- Mark Steyn, National Post, April 4, 2002
"The Oslo accords were a Trojan Horse; the strategic goal is the liberation of Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea"
- Faysal Al-Husseini, Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, in his last interview, 'Al-Arabi' daily newspaper (Egypt), June 24, 2001
"This is Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the Mediterranean sea, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah (in Gaza). The gap between Palestinian expectations and the Israeli conspiracy will inevitably lead to a collision."
- "Our Position" issued by Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO in PA newspaper AL HAYAT AL-JADEEDA, Dec. 19, 1998
"The Land of Muslim Palestine is a single unit which cannot be divided. There is no difference between Haifa and Shechem (Nablus), between Lod and Ramallah, and between Jerusalem and Nazareth . . . the land of Palestine is sacred waqf land for the benefit of all Muslims, east and west. No one has the right to divide it or give up any of it. The liberation of Palestine is obligatory for all the Islamic nations and not only for the Palestinian nation."
- Prayer sermon broadcast live on the PA radio station, April 30, 1999
"According to the Phased Plan, we will establish a Palestinian state on any part of Palestine that the enemy will retreat from. The Palestinian state will be a stage in our prolonged struggle for the liberation of Palestine on all of its territories."
- Abu Iyad, Arafat' s second-in-command, 1988
"After the Palestinian state wins recognition from most of the nations of the world, as expected, the Israeli presence on Palestinian lands will become illegal and we will fight this with weapons. The battle against the Israeli forces is a right reserved to us."
- Farouk Radoumi, head of the PLO's diplomatic desk, in PA newspaper, AL HAYAT AL-JADEEDA, October 15, l998
"The people are in great need of a 'myth' to fill their consciousness and imagination...."
- Musa Alami, 1948
"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon ... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed.... We have accustomed them to begging.... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon ... men, women and children--all this in the service of political purposes...."
- Khaled Al-Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war
"Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... they have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal."
- King Hussein of Jordan, 1960
"The nations of western Europe condemned Israel's position despite their guarantee of her security.... They understood that ... their dependence upon sources of energy precluded their allowing themselves to incur Arab wrath."
- Al-Haytham Al-Ayubi, Arab Palestinian military strategist, 1974
"Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Americans who are like them."
- Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, member of the Palestinian Fatwa Council
"Palestine has never existed... as an autonomous entity. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture.... There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians.... Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.... Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today.... No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough."
- from "Myths of the Middle East", Joseph Farah, Arab-American editor and journalist, WorldNetDaily.Com, 11 October 2000
"The conclusion I drew is that in fact he [Arafat] really can't do a permanent deal. He could never do better than what Clinton put on the table [the bridging proposals presented at the end of December], and he couldn't accept that."
- Dennis Ross, June 22, 2001
"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.... We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
- Golda Meir
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