The presidential compound in Ramallah has been wrecked, some buildings have been bulldozed, others gutted by fire. At the entrance to the white stone block where the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, has his office, we ducked around a barrier made of a large metal filing cabinet, piled high with leaking sandbags, writes Michael Jansen, in Ramallah
Mr Arafat stood to greet former minister Mr David Andrews and walked round the oval conference table to shake his hand and to kiss the hand of the Irish representative to the Palestine Authority, Ms Isolde Moylan, and her deputy, Ms Ann Murphy.
Mr Andrews, who met the Palestinian leader during a visit to Dublin in happier days, expressed his pleasure at Mr Arafat's survival of the Israeli onslaught on the compound.
Alert and articulate, although clearly very weary, Mr Arafat spoke softly in English. "The situation is very complicated, they are still besieging all our cities and towns. We cannot move from place to place."
The Oslo peace process, which granted the Palestinians autonomous areas, "has been cancelled", he said.
The current siege of Ramallah and Bethlehem, he added, constitutes a violation "of the agreement made in this room with the British and the Americans which said that both Ramallah and the Church of the Nativity had to be solved".
He said the list of wanted men in the church was initially seven names long, but one man was dead and two others were in hospital.
"We discovered they are holding all those people for just four. It was agreed that it could be solved if I would accept to send them outside for study or training." he stated.
He could not tell whether this issue would be resolved overnight. While he remained committed to achieving peace through negotiations, he held little hope for the peace conference proposed by the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell.
"The Europeans don't have any influence [on Israel]. Only the Americans," he stated gloomily. But Europe had to "get the Americans to do more".
He also dismissed proposals from several Arab countries to rebuild the devastated Jenin refugee camp. "They make offers to the media, not to us, then they don't pay one cent."
When Mr Andrews told Mr Arafat that the Irish Government had made a donation of €1 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and that the Irish Red Cross will be mounting an appeal to aid the Palestinian Red Crescent, Mr Arafat replied: "I am sure that you will deliver on your promise."