Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa, popularly known as Yasser Arafator by his kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian leader. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, President of the Palestinian National Authority, and leader of the Fatah political party and former paramilitary group, which he founded in 1959. Originally opposed to Israel's existence, he modified his position in 1988 when he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242. Arafat and his movement operated from several Arab countries...
ProfessionWorld Leader
Date of Birth24 August 1929
CityCairo, Egypt
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.
All religious wars are about people arguing over who has the biggest invisible friend.
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.
It will be another disaster, after Irangate. Not only that, not only this longest Arab - Israeli confrontation: but also the most important and successful war of attrition which still continues in the south of Lebanon.
I can't let it pass when you say: "You are the weak party." No, I am not the weak party. I am the man who is making the war. I am the man who is making the peace.
Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations.
We have absolute support from all our masses inside our occupied territories and even outside our occupied territories. The "War of the Camps" [in Lebanon] is another picture of this strong support of our masses.
[Alexander Haig and Ariel Sharon ] casualties in this war were more than in all the previous Arab - Israeli confrontations. If you remember, it is the only war [in 1982] which hasn't a hero among the Israeli generals.
The war of attrition against the Zionist enemy will never cease.
is more than realistic because according to the signed agreements ... our state should have been declared by 1998 or 1999.
Our duty today, the duty of all of us is to continue the work that I started with my late partner Yitzhak Rabin, to protect the peace of the brave and to continue and complete that work,
complete and immediate cessation of all military activities ... especially suicide attacks.
We had met. I had met Shimon Peres in Cairo, in Lisbon before that, before that my colleagues met him in Athens with the participation of the European Union's Javier Solana and we have no objection to meeting him at any time.
I would like to call on you to re-evaluate all our administrative, ministerial and security institutions after we have seen errors here and there, errors that cannot be hidden from the public opinion.