Nope, 's no joke. Arafat has made a statement, too (quoting from CNN):

" 'They either want to kill me, or capture me, or expel me,' Arafat said, speaking by telephone to Al Jazeera television from his Ramallah headquarters. 'I hope I will be a martyr in the Holy Land. I have chosen this path and if I fall, one day a Palestinian child will raise the Palestinian flag above our mosques and churches.' Arafat also said no one in the Arab world would 'surrender or bow' to Israel and warned that 'to Palestine, millions of martyrs will flow.' "

...or should I not have posted that, since we're supposed to ignore flamers?