Quotes from Palestinian Leaders
and Media
Palestinian Political and
Religious Leaders
When the Palestinian leadership faces
Western media, they tend to focus on Israeli "aggression". When
they talk to their own Arabic media, a different story arises. Look
through the following quotes and see if you think these are people that want
peace. For a very thorough examination of Arabic media, see Anti-Semitism
in the Arab World. For more quotes, see the ZOA
website. For quotes by Shimon Peres, go to Shimon
Says.
Yasser
Arafat - Palestinian 'President'
Eulogy to a Palestinian
official,
June 15
1995
"The oath is firm to continue this
difficult Jihad (holy war), this long Jihad, in the path of martyrs, the path of
sacrifices"
al-Ayyam, November 16 1998
"The Palestinian Rifle is ready and we will aim it if they try to prevent
us from praying in Jerusalem... the "Generals of the Stones" are
ready".
Organization of the Islamic Conference
(OIC), Qatar, May 26, 2001
-
Palestinians are "irrigating the land with their blood" in the
struggle for "Palestine".
- Israel
is using "depleted uranium, poison gases, and radioactive material"
against the "homes, farms, and factories" of the Palestinians.
-
Israel is employing the "most modern weapons of murder, destruction and
annihilation."
-
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has "received the architectural designs to
build a synagogue in the courtyard of the Haram al-Sharif as a basis for
building the Temple... "
Guardian Unlimited, June 30 2001
"I am not looking for Hamas
or for Islamic Jihad or any other parties, because we respect all these parties
and there is a union between all of us."
Private speech entitled
"The Impending Total Collapse of Israel", Stockholm, Sweden, January
30, 1996
"We Palestinians will take
over everything, including all of Jerusalem....All the rich Jews who will get
compensation will travel to America....We of the PLO will now concentrate all
our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps. Within five
years we will have six to seven million Arabs living in the West Bank and in
Jerusalem....You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and
establish a purely Palestinian State....I have no use for Jews; they are and
remain Jews."
PA
Television, to a delegation of Arab leaders, January 26, 2002
"Yes,
brothers, with our souls and blood we redeem you, O Palestine. This is
the decision of the people of exceeding strength. This is a sacred bond. We are
up to this duty. You know I am saying this because I know our people. I know
what it means that in the midst of this economic crisis, yet none of them
complained. However, they said: Allah is great! Glory to Allah and his prophet!
Jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad!"
Egyptian Orbit TV, April 18, 1998
The Oslo accords are comparable to
"when the Prophet Mohammed made the Hudaibiya (Khudaibiya) agreement...we must learn
from his steps...We respect agreements the way that the Prophet Mohammed
respected the agreements which he signed." Mohammed in fact breached the
agreement, pillaging Mecca and killing many of its citizens with whom he had
come to the "peace" agreement.
Al Ayyam, January,
1998
Regarding the Oslo agreement: "Since
the decision of the Palestinian National Council at its 12th meeting in 1974,
the PLO has adopted the political solution [later known as the Strategy of
Stages - ed. note] of establishing a National Authority over any territory from
which the occupation withdraws."
For more quotes from Yasser
Arafat, click here.
Abdul
Aziz Shaheen- PA Minister
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida,
January 4, 1998
"The Oslo accord was a preface for
the Palestinian Authority, and the Palestinian Authority will be a preface for
the Palestinian state, which in turn will be a preface for the liberation of the
entire Palestinian land."
Nabil Sha'ath - Palestinian Cabinet Minister
Nablus, January 1996
"We decided to liberate our homeland step-by-step... Should Israel
continue - no problem. And so, we honor the peace treaties and non-violence...
if and when Israel says "enough"... in that case it is saying that we
will return to violence. But this time it will be with 30,000 armed Palestinian
soldiers and in a land with elements of freedom... If we reach a dead end we
will go back to our war and struggle like we did forty years ago"
ANN
television, October 7 2000
"No one believed him (Arafat) when he used to say it... [but] The choice is
not at all between options of negotiation and fighting: you can have
negotiations and fight at the same time...the Palestinian people fight with
weapons, with jihad, with Intifada and suicide actions... and it is destined to
always fight and negotiate at the same time."
('Moderate')
Faisal Husseini - PA Minister of Jerusalem Affairs
Al-Safir (Lebanon), March 21 2001
"We
may lose or win [tactically] but our eyes willcontinue to aspire to the
strategic goal, namely, to Palestine from the river (i.e. Jordan) tothe sea (i.e. the Mediterranean). Whatever we get now cannot make us forget this
supreme truth." - by the way, this man was described as a
"moderate"
Le
Nouvel Observateur, Aug.27-Sept.2, 1998, p.46
"We
will forcefully open up our borders with Jordan and Egypt, which are currently
controlled by the Israeli army. There will be violent confrontation and death,
but this time on both sides. Are the Israelis more numerous and better equipped?
Yes, but the superiority of us Palestinians lies in the fact that we are willing
to lay down our lives, whereas for them every death is a tragedy that society
cannot bear."
Syrian
Television, September 9, 1996
"Palestine
is from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea": , Hussein was asked what the
boundaries of "Palestine" are. He replied that "all Palestinians
agree that the just boundaries of Palestine are the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea. Realistically, whatever can be obtained now should be
accepted and that subsequent events perhaps in the next fifteen or twenty years
would present an opportunity to realize the just boundaries of Palestine."
Sheikh
Ikrama Sabri - PA-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem
Palestinian
Television, January 11, 2001
"No
stone of the Western Wall has any connection to Hebrew history...
... The Jews call this the
Wailing Wall for two reasons. The first, the overt [reason] is that they cry
because they lost one of the Ten Commandments [tablets], and they lie and claim
that the Commandment [tablet] was lost in the area around Al Aqsa. This is why
religious Jews are apprehensive of entering the Temple Mount, because of the
fear that they might step on a paving stone underneath which may be the lost
commandment [tablet]. The second reason, that is not openly stated is that the
Jews cry, repent, and remonstrate before Allah that He chose Mohammed from among
the Arabs and did not choose a [prophet] from among the Children of Israel... In
Mohammed's time the Jews thought that the final prophet would be a Jew, and they
prepared themselves to receive him and they even threatened the Arabs and said
to them that ‘When the new prophet comes, we'll see what we will do to you'
and then the prophet turned up from among the Arabs and they (the Jews) became
angry and bitter that he (Mohammed) is the prophet. What they are crying about
is their protest ‘Why wasn't the prophet [chosen] from among the Children of
Israel, as they had anticipated."
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, 15 October 2000
"There is not a single stone in
Palestine that proves the [historical] Jewish existence [in the land]."
Marwan Barghouti, Fatah secretary in the West
Bank
Interview with Al Hayyat Al-Jadedah (official
Palestinian Authority daily newspaper), printed in The Jerusalem Times,
June 8 2001
"We still believe, however, that we are entitled
to use all means available to us to face the enemy."
"The Intifada came to
end occupation, not to allow for a return to negotiations."
"I believe that a return to negotiations would be
nothing but a waste of time and that seeking the mediation of the US is
useless."
"He who seeks peace with Sharon is pursuing a
mirage. There is no chance for peace with Sharon. The only way to deal with
Sharon is resistance."
Jerusalem
Times, June 2001
"The intifada did not start
because of Sharon's visit [but rather] because of the desire to put an end to
occupation and because the Palestinians did not approve of the peace process in
its previous form."
Ahmed
Qureia (Abu Ala), Palestinian parliament
speaker,
AP, June 11 2001
"We are not the Israelis' policemen to arrest our
own people" - referring to the Israeli demand that the Palestinians arrest
terrorists.
Abdel Jawad
Saleh, PA's Minister of Agriculture,
Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah on Nov. 6,
1997
"The Jews seek to conquer
the world...We must expose the Zionist-Colonialist plot and its goals, which
destroy not only our people but the entire world."
Imad
Faluji, PA cabinet minister, Rally in Lebanon rally, March 3, 2001
The violence "had been planned since Chairman Arafat's return from Camp
David..."
Palestinian
Media
Source:
Palestinian Media Watch
Al
Ayyam, and a similar report in Al Quds, February 13 2000
"Medical
sources reported yesterday evening that more than 40 residents were injured in a
strange occurrence of hysteria and nervous collapse as a result of their
inhaling poison gas, fired for the first time by the Israeli occupation forces
on defenseless residents. Medical specialists are of the opinion that it is
nerve gas, prohibited by international law.
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida
(official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper), October
28 2001
"Senior
medical sources related yesterday that the occupation forces used a new kind of
lethal bullets against innocent residents... The new bullets have sharp metal
wings and they fly at great speeds..."
WAFA (official Palestinian News Agency),
Qata, May 21 2001
Israel is "starting a new genocide against the Palestinian people by
poisoning them, using poisoned candy bags dropped from airplanes."
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida
(official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper), January
31 2001
"Authoritative
medical sources revealed that there is an increase in the average number of
deformed births in the Shafaa hospital in Gaza. They do not deny the possibility
that this phenomenon is associated with depleted uranium."
Al Ayyam,
October 10 2000
(Regarding destruction of
Joseph's Tomb, destroyed by Palestinian mobs and police):
"Yesterday,
the City of Nablus began the rehabilitation and renovation of the demolished
parts of ‘Joseph's Tomb' ... It is important to note that heavy damage was
caused to the tomb and to a large number of nearby structures during these
disturbances, in the wake of the shootings by the occupation forces which are
concentrated on Mounts Grizim and Eival, and because of their use of heavy
machine guns."
Palestinian
Television, December 23 2000
Dr.
Suliman Alshrafaa, a Palestinian academic who hosted the religious television
program, Customs of Ramadan, says:
"We
often hear those false claims of the Jews that their Temple Solomon's Temple is
located underneath the Al Aqsa mosque... There is a professor by the name of
Menachem Klein from Bar Ilan University, located in occupied Palestine [Ramat
Gan, adjacent to Tel Aviv - Ed note] whose specialty is Jerusalem and argues
that the false arguments according to which the Temple is located underneath Al
Aqsa are indeed deeply rooted Jewish claims, but in truth it is envisioned that
the third Temple in its entirety will descend from heaven after the coming of
the Messiah. This is the truth. Klein argues that this is stated explicitly in
Rashi's commentary Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchak, the number one [Jewish] commentator on
the Talmud on the Mishna in Sukkah, Chapter 40, side 1 [sic]. And so it is
asserted by Rav Sa'adiah Ga'on, a native of Al Fahoum who headed the great
Yeshiva in Iraq, commentator number two. Therefore, Rabbis maintained that it is
totally incorrect that the Temple is underneath the Al Aqsa Mosque...".
Hafez
Bargutti, editor-in-chief, Al Hayat-Al Jadida (Palestinian
authority official daily newspaper), October 27,
2000
"...I
was hurt by a letter from an injured [rioter] in one of the hospitals where he
mentioned that a nurse said "anyone who throws rocks should go to
hell!" And I was hurt by several fathers that forbid their older children
to participate in the processions, while this is their right. But when anyone of
these [fathers] say [to their sons] 'Don't go, and whoever dies is a carcass,
well then this is one of the most severe transgressions. Furthermore we are hurt
by some who think they are big but are in fact small, who exploit an opportunity
to harm the warriors and to mock them. A passive civilian, a passive senior
ranking individual, or a lazy official may disregard their duty, but it is
forbidden for them to humiliate the warriors or to mock the wounded or to
conjure up plots against the field-active generation commanding the Intifada.
These destructive, abominable [individuals] harm us more than the bullets of the
occupation, because they constitute a fifth column. Our nation must learn a
lesson and take them to reckoning later on."
Dr.
Lufti Abd al-Azim, Al-Ahram
"The
first thing that we have to make clear is that no distinction must be made
between the Jew and the Israeli....The Jew is a Jew, through the millennia....in
spurning all moral values, devouring the living and drinking his blood for the
sake of a few coins. The Jew, the Merchant of Venice, does not differ from the
killer of Deir Yasin or the killer of the camps. They are equal examples of
human degradation. Let us therefore put aside such distinctions and talk about
Jews."
Many more quotes will be added. Email
us if you have any more "good" quotes that show the intention of the
Palestinian leadership.
