Unfortunately, little attention was paid to how Arafat ruled. In fact, some saw the harsh and repressive nature of Arafat's regime as actually bolstering the prospects for peace.
Arafat rejected the deal because, as a dictator who had directed all his energies toward strengthening the Palestinians hatred toward Israel, Arafat could not afford to make peace.
Politics is a dynamic process. When I was a young man in the 1970s, Yasser Arafat had just perpetrated various terrorist attacks. Just a few years later, after I had entered European Parliament, the same Yasser Arafat was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nobody ever predicted, a week before President Sadat came to Jerusalem in 1977, that his arrival would be the beginning of a peace process that would end up in an - unhappy - Israeli-Egyptian peace. We have seen peace with Egypt. We have seen peace with Jordan. We have seen the handshake between Rabin and Arafat - things are possible.
Arafat is the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East.
Yasser Arafat never wanted to make peace with Israel.
Ask Bill Clinton about Yasir Arafat. Clinton and Barak did everything they could in 2000 at Camp David. Arafat walked away from it.
Israel was seen as having demonstrated unmistakably it wanted peace, and the reason it wasn't available, achievable was because Arafat wouldn't accept it.
I do not support peace in the Middle East. And I do not support Arafat. He is a stupid, incompetent fool!
People - whether you like to hear what people have got to say, not you have got to listen to them, and turning your back on people I found very insulting. If you're going to really make peace, you have got to confront each other and look each other in the eye, and that's what's happen - I'm always remember Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat and the reluctance in - Yasser Arafat put his hand down and the reluctance of Yitzhak Rabin, but then he had that second and then he just shook the hand.
The central premise behind Oslo was that if Arafat were given enough legitimacy, territory, weapons and money, he would use his power to fight terror and make peace with Israel.
Hamas, the opponents of Arafat, the opponents of peace, urged a boycott of the election, and yet there was an 85 percent turnout where Hamas is supposed to be strong. Isn't that really quite incredible?
Do I trust Yasser Arafat? Of course not. Why should I? Why should anyone trust a politician, whether Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Benjamin Netanyahu, George W. Bush, or Yasser Arafat?
Hamas, the opponents of Arafat, the opponents of peace, urged a boycott of the election, and yet there was an 85 percent turnout where Hamas is supposed to be strong. Isnt that really quite incredible?
The pain barrier was not a barrier for her; she could go beyond it.
I enter negotiations with Chairman Arafat, the leader of the PLO, the representative of the Palestinian people, with the purpose to have coexistence between our two entities, Israel as a Jewish state and Palestinian state, entity, next to us, living in peace.