SEATTLE — When the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat read the Declaration of the Palestinian Independence just over 22 years ago, Palestinians everywhere were enthralled. They hung on his every word during the Palestinian National Council session in Algeria on Nov. 15, 1988. The council members incessantly applauded and chanted in the name of Palestine, freedom, the people and much more.
Back in Nuseirat, a refugee camp in Gaza, a large crowd of neighbors and friends watched the event on a small black-and-white television.
The declaration of independence read: "On this day, unlike all others, as we stand at the threshold of a new dawn, in all honor and modesty we humbly bow to the sacred spirits of our fallen ones, Palestinian and Arab, by the purity of whose sacrifice for the homeland our sky has been illuminated and our Land given life. . . ."