Yasser Arafat quotes

Yasser Arafat was a Palestinian political leader and a prominent figure in the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. As chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), he played a key role in international negotiations regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He became a symbol of both Palestinian nationalism and controversial peace efforts. Here are 39 of his quotes:

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

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

Yasser Arafat

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

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

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

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

Today 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. I repeat, do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.

Yasser Arafat

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

Yasser Arafat

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

Yasser Arafat

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

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 until either the last boy and the last girl raise the Palestinian flag over the walls, the churches and the mosques of Jerusalem.

Yasser Arafat

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

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

Yasser Arafat

Did you follow what [General Yehoshafat] Harkabi wrote? Formerly of the Israeli military intelligence service. Remember him? Did you follow what he wrote? He said that it was for the sake of the existence of Israel that we have to accept the rights of the Palestinians to have their independent state. I'm a man of history. My vision is guiding me, my clear vision. It is not by chance that the currents of peace are increasing daily inside Israel. Many of the Israelis begin to understand and discover the realities and the facts. They can't demolish five million Palestinians. They can't annihilate them. We are not the Red Indians.

Yasser Arafat

The difference between the revolutionary and the terrorist lies in the reason for which each fights. For whoever stands by a just cause and fights for the freedom and liberation of his land from the invaders, the settlers and the colonialists cannot possibly be called terrorist, otherwise the American people in their struggle for liberation from the British colonialists would have been terrorists; the European resistance against the Nazis would be terrorism, the struggle of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples would also be terrorism, and many of you who are in this Assembly hall were considered terrorists.

Yasser Arafat

Those who call us terrorists wish to prevent world public opinion from discovering the truth about us and from seeing the justice on our faces. They seek to bide the terrorism and tyranny of their acts, and our own posture of self-defence.

Yasser Arafat

Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations... We shall not rest until the day when we return to our home, and until we destroy Israel.

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

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

Yasser Arafat

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

Yasser Arafat

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

Yasser Arafat

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

Yasser Arafat