I went to Iraq because I wanted to see what one year of occupation had done to Iraqi society, and I went to the West Bank and Gaza Strip because I wanted to see what three generations of occupation had done to Palestinian society. I found a lot more hopelessness and despair in Palestine.

Palestinian violence is not a response to the capture of the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian nationalism's roots are not so shallow.

Mr. Arafat cannot accept less than 100 percent of the 1967 border of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

We don't have a state, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank. Gaza is under siege and the West Bank is occupied. What we have in the Gaza Strip is not a state, but rather a regime of an elected government. A Palestinian state will not be created at this time except in the territories of 1967.

Economic support from the rest of the Arab states to the fledgling Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is virtually non-existent.

The occupier's retreat from Gaza and northern West Bank is a result of resistance.