As a leading figure in the talks, Ashrawi suddenly found herself in the limelight. This put her life in danger from fundamentalist groups. She has received death threats and now has a bodyguard to protect her.

"I have faced death many times, assassination attempts, I can think of two times at least in which I directly faced a machine gun or an assassin. When we were in Madrid also we knew that there was a booby trap car filled with explosives as an attempt at killing me. But living in Palestine in itself is a risk, because I lived under occupation where every day you are subject to any kind of sudden violence. I have been in demonstrations where the army shot at us, I've been beaten up, I've been teargassed, but I've managed to survive all of them."