Yasser Arafat

Arab guerilla leader of Palestine Liberation Organization. He and Israeli P.M. Yitzhak Rabin reshaped the Middle East with an agreement toward independence for Palestinians, signed in Washington, DC at 11:46 AM EDT on September 13, 1993. They were sworn enemies until a few days prior, based on decades of distrust. Arafat was born the fifth child of a Palestinian merchant in Cairo. In 1933, his mother died and he was sent to live with an uncle in Jerusalem, although he spent a lot of time in Cairo. In 1946 he smuggled arms to Palestine for use in the Arab cause and joined throngs of Arab students in 1947-48 to protest attempts to define the state of Israel. He left college in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war to join fighters in Palestine. In 1950 he established a Palestinian Students’ League in Cairo and served multiple terms as its head. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1956 in architectural engineering. That same year he moved to Kuwait where he worked for public works department. He later ran his own successful contracting firm and his nom de guerre, Abu Ammar, meant “Father of Construction.” In 1959, with other Palestinians in Kuwait, he founded Fatah, a political movement devoted to the Palestinian National Liberation Movement and called for armed struggle against Israel. Arafat moved his base to Damascus and begin agitating and organizing as he traveled between Syria and Jordan. Jordan and Egypt eventually turned away from the movement and, under King Hussein, Jordan tried to block the attacks. A bitter enmity between Arafat and King Hussein ultimately ensued. By 1965, Fatah had emerged from being an underground organization and attempted a series of attacks against Israel. After the Six Day War resulting in an Arab defeat in 1967, Arafat was forced to flee to Jordan. In 1969, he took the helm of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Arafat’s movement became so powerful that then-king Hussein initiated what is now known as “Black September, 1970” against Arafat’s followers. Now in Lebanon, Arafat gave an address to the UN in 1974 which brought global attention to the Palestinian cause. In 1976, Lebanon’s civil war allowed the Palestinians to establish a base in the south of Lebanon from which they launched attacks on Israel. Israel invaded Lebanon with disastrous consequences for the Palestinians. In 1982, Arafat fled to Beirut with his loyalists but the Israeli army chased him out and he went to Tunisia. The year 1987 saw the First Palestinian Intifadah or uprising, with Arafat agitating and organizing from Tunisia. In 1992, he was the lone survivor when his private jet crashed. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, Arafat backed the Iraqi dictator and lost the support of many other Arabic countries in the Mideast. When in 1991, Americans invaded Iraq, they expelled the thousands of Palestinians that had settled there. Arafat negotiated a peace with the Israelis with the support of the U.S. In 1993 he signed an accord giving Palestinians control of most of the Gaza Strip and 27% of the West Bank, and he shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his work on this accord. He then returned to Gaza and engaged in peace talks in 1997. All the while, Arafat was establishing government monopolies in Gaza and seemed to ignore the poor. Many of his own people were critical of his ability to rule Palestine, and his inability or unwillingness to stop Palestinian terrorist attacks brought the criticism of the United States. The second Intifadah occurred in 2000. In the War on Terror declared by the US after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, Arafat denounced bin Laden and expressed sympathy with the American losses. At the same time, ancient enmities flared once more in bloody exchanges with equally militant Israelis. Since 2001 Arafat has been confined to his Ramallah compound by the Israeli Army Arafat has reportedly suffered from Parkinson’s Disease since the 1990s, though some aides claimed that his trembling was caused by neurological damage sustained in his 1992 plane crash. He married his secretary Suha Tawil in 1991 and they had a daughter in 1995. In October 2004, Arafat missed several important meetings and didn’t appear for prayers at Ramadan. He was said to be suffering from flu or similar ailment. However, his condition worsened and he sought medical treatment outside his Ramallah compound. On October 28, 2004 doctors diagnosed a platelet deficiency. With safe passage promised by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a frail and thin Arafat was airlifted to a Paris hospital on October 30 where doctors shortly thereafter ruled out leukemia but, other than the additional report of a high white blood cell count, awaited results of other tests in order to make a diagnosis. Arafat's condition soon worsened and he slipped into a coma. At 3:30 AM CET on November 11, 2004, Arafat died in the intensive care unit of Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart, France, according to spokesman General Christian Estripeau. He had suffered a brain hemorrhage and coma but the cause of his death is as yet unknown. He was flown to Cairo for a military funeral and, on November 12, 2004, with crowds displaying high emotion for their fallen leader, Arafat was buried in Ramallah. His followers express their hope that his wish to be buried in Jerusalem would one day be fulfilled. Shortly after Arafat's death, his brother died at 5:20 PM on December 1, 2004 at the Palestine Hospital in Cairo, Egypt where he had been receiving treatment for stomach cancer. Fathi Arafat was the founder of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and was 67 at the time of his death. In July 2012 abnormally high concentrations of 210Po have been detected in Arafat's clothes and personal belongings. The exhumation of his body is discussed for further studies regarding a possible radioactive poisoning. Link to Wikipedia biography Link to Astrodienst discussion forum