Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa
al-Husseini ( , 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004),
popularly known as
Yasser Arafat ( ) or by his
kunya Abu Ammar ( ),
was a
Palestinian leader. He was
Chairman
of the
Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO),
President of the
Palestinian National
Authority (PNA), and leader of the
Fatah
political party, which he founded in 1959. Aburish says the date of
Fatah's founding is unclear but claims in 1959 it was exposed by
its magazine.
Zeev Schiff, Raphael Rothstein (1972).
Fedayeen; Guerillas
Against Israel. McKay, p.58; Schiff and Rothstein claim Fatah
was founded in 1959.
Salah Khalaf and
Khalil al-Wazir state Fatah’s first
formal meeting was in October 1959. See Anat N.Kurz (2005)
Fatah and the Politics of Violence: The Institutionalization of
a Popular Struggle. Brighton, Portland: Sussex Academic Press
(Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies), pp.29–30
Arafat spent much of
his life fighting against Israel
in the name
of Palestinian self-determination. Originally
opposed to Israel's existence, he modified his position in 1988
when he accepted
UN
Security Council Resolution 242.
Arafat and his movement operated from several Arab countries.
In the
late 1960s and early 1970s, Fatah faced off with Jordan
in a brief
civil war. Forced out of Jordan and into Lebanon
, Arafat and
Fatah were major targets of Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions of
that country. He was "revered by many Arabs," and the
majority of the Palestinian people, regardless of
political ideology or faction, viewed
him as a
freedom fighter who
symbolized their national aspirations. However, he was "reviled by
many Israelis" and described "in much of the West as the world's
number one
terrorist" for the attacks his
faction led against civilians.
Later in his career, Arafat engaged in a series of negotiations
with the government of Israel to end the decades-long conflict
between that country and the PLO. These included the
Madrid Conference of 1991, the
1993
Oslo Accords and the
2000 Camp David Summit. His political
rivals, including
Islamists and several PLO
leftists, often denounced him for
being
corrupt or too submissive
in his concessions to the Israeli government. In 1994, Arafat
received the
Nobel Peace Prize,
together with
Yitzhak Rabin and
Shimon Peres, for the negotiations at
Oslo.
During this time, Hamas
and other militant organizations rose to power and shook the
foundations of the authority that Fatah under Arafat had
established in the Palestinian territories
.
In late 2004, after effectively being confined within
his Ramallah compound for over two
years by the Israeli army, Arafat became ill, fell into a coma and
died on 11 November 2004 at the age of 75. While the exact cause of
his death remains unknown and no
autopsy was
performed, his doctors spoke of
idiopathic thrombocytopenic
purpura and
cirrhosis.
Early life
Birth and childhood
A portrait of young Arafat,
1940s
Yasser Arafat was born in
Cairo
to
Palestinian parents.
His father, Abdel
Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza; whose
mother, Yasser's paternal grandmother, was Egyptian
.
Arafat's
father worked as a textile merchant in Cairo's religiously mixed
Sakakini
District
.
Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along
with his younger brother
Fathi, the
only offspring born in Cairo.
His mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, was from a
Jerusalem
family. She died from a kidney ailment in
1933, when Arafat was four years of age.
Arafat's
first visit to Jerusalem came when his father, unable to raise
seven children alone, sent him and his brother Fathi to their
mother's family in the Moroccan Quarter
of the Old City
. They lived there with their uncle Salim
Abul Saud for four years. In 1937, their father recalled them to be
taken care of by their older sister, Inam. Arafat had a
deteriorating relationship with his father; when he died in 1952,
Arafat did not attend the funeral, nor did he visit his father's
grave upon his return to Gaza.
Education and 1948 Arab–Israeli War
In 1944,
Arafat enrolled in the University of King Fuad I
and graduated in 1950. He later claimed to
have sought a better understanding of
Judaism and
Zionism by
engaging in discussions with
Jews and reading
publications by
Theodor Herzl and
other prominent Zionists. At the same time, he became an
Arab nationalist and began procuring
weapons to be smuggled into the former
British Mandate of Palestine,
for use by
irregulars in the
Arab Higher Committee and the
Army of the Holy War
militias.
During the
1948 Arab–Israeli
War, Arafat left the University and, along with other Arabs,
sought to enter
Palestine to join Arab
forces fighting against
Israeli troops.
However, instead of joining the ranks of the
Palestinian fedayeen, Arafat fought
alongside the
Muslim Brotherhood,
although he did not join the organization. He took part in combat
in the Gaza area (which was the main battleground of
Egyptian forces during the conflict). In
early 1949, the war was winding down in Israel's favor, and Arafat
returned to Cairo from a lack of logistical support.
After returning to the University, Arafat studied
civil engineering and served as president
of the
General
Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) from 1952 to 1956. During
his first year as president of the union, the University was
renamed Cairo University after a
coup was carried out by the
Free Officers Movement overthrowing
King Farouk I. By that time, Arafat
had graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and was
called to duty to fight with Egyptian forces during the
Suez Crisis; however, he never actually fought
on the battlefield.
Later that year, at a conference in Prague
, he donned a
solid white keffiyeh–different from the
checkered one he adopted later in Kuwait
, which was
to become his emblem.
Name
Arafat's original full name was Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf
Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini. Mohammed Abdel Rahman was his first
name; Abdel Raouf was his father's name and Arafat his
grandfather's.
Al-Qudwa was the name of his
tribe and al-Husseini was that of the clan to which the al-Qudwas
belonged. It should be noted that Arafat's clan, al-Husseini was
based in Gaza and should not be confused with the well-known, but
unrelated,
al-Husayni clan of
Jerusalem.
Since Arafat was raised in Cairo, the tradition of dropping the
Mohammed or Ahmad portion of one's first name was common; notable
Egyptians such as
Anwar Sadat and
Hosni Mubarak did so. However, Arafat
dropped also the Abdel Rahman and Abdel Raouf parts of his name as
well. During the early 1950s, Arafat adopted the name Yasser, and
in the early years of Arafat's guerrilla career, he assumed the
nom de guerre of Abu Ammar. Both names are related to
Ammar ibn Yasir, one of
Muhammad's early
companion.
Although
he dropped most of his inherited names, he retained Arafat due to
its significance
in Islam
.
Rise of Fatah
Founding of Fatah
Following
the Suez Crisis in 1956, Egyptian
president Gamal Abdel Nasser, a
leader of the Free Officers Movement, agreed to allow the United Nations Emergency
Force to establish itself in the Sinai Peninsula
and Gaza
Strip
, causing the expulsion of all guerrilla or "fedayeen" forces there—including
Arafat. Arafat originally struggled to obtain a visa
to Canada
and later
Saudi
Arabia
, but was unsuccessful in both attempts.
In 1957,
he applied for a visa to Kuwait (at the time
a British
protectorate) and was approved, based on his work
in civil engineering. There he encountered two Palestinian
friends:
Salah Khalaf (
Abu
Iyad) and
Khalil al-Wazir
(
Abu Jihad), both official members of the
Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood. Arafat had met Abu Iyad while attending Cairo
University and Abu Jihad in Gaza. Both became Arafat's right-hand
men in future politics. Abu Iyad traveled with Arafat to Kuwait in
late in 1960; Abu Jihad, working as also a teacher, had been living
there since 1959. After settling in Kuwait, Abu Iyad helped Arafat
obtain a temporary job as a schoolteacher.
As Arafat began to develop friendships with other Palestinian
refugees (some of whom he knew also from his Cairo days), he and
the others gradually founded the group that became known as
Fatah. The exact date for the establishment of
Fatah is unknown. However, in 1959, the group's existence was
attested in the pages of a Palestinian nationalist magazine,
Filastununa Nida al-Hayat (Our Palestine, The Call of
Life), which was written and edited by Abu Jihad. FaTaH is a
reverse acronym of the Arabic
name
Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini which
translates into "The Palestinian National Liberation Movement".
Fatah is also a word that was used in early
Islamic times to refer to
'conquest'.
Fatah dedicated itself to the liberation of Palestine by an armed
struggle carried out by Palestinians themselves. This differed from
other Palestinian political and guerrilla organizations, most of
which firmly believed in a united Arab response.
Arafat's organization
never embraced the ideologies of major Arab national governments of
the time, in contrast to other Palestinian factions, which often
became satellites of nations such as Egypt, Iraq
, Saudi
Arabia, Syria
and
others.
In accordance with his ideology, Arafat generally refused to accept
donations to his organization from major Arab governments, in order
to act independently of them. However, he did not want to alienate
them, and sought their undivided support by avoiding alliances with
groups loyal to other ideologies.
He worked hard in Kuwait, however, to
establish the groundwork for Fatah's future financial support by
enlisting contributions from the many wealthy Palestinians working
there and other Gulf
States, such as Qatar
(where he
met Mahmoud Abbas in 1961).
These businessmen and oil workers contributed generously to the
Fatah organization.
Arafat continued this process in other Arab
countries such as Libya
and
Syria.
In 1962, Arafat and his closest companions immigrated to Syria—a
country sharing a border with Israel—which had recently seceded
from its ephemeral
union with
Nasser's Egypt. Fatah had approximately three hundred members
by this time, but none were fighters. In Syria, however, he managed
to recruit members by offering them higher incomes to enable his
armed attacks against Israel. Fatah's manpower was incremented
further after Arafat decided to offer much higher salaries to
members of the
Palestine
Liberation Army (PLA), the regular military force of the
Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO), which was created by the
Arab League in the summer of 1964.
On December 31 of
that same year, a squad from al-Assifa,
the armed branch of Fatah at the time, attempted to infiltrate
Israel, but they were intercepted and detained by Lebanese security forces. Several other raids with
Fatah's poorly trained and badly equipped fighters followed this
incident. Some were successful, others failed in their missions.
Arafat often led these incursions personally.
Arafat and his top aide Abu Jihad, were detained in Syria when a
pro-Syrian Palestinian leader, Yusuf Orabi was murdered. Hours
before he was killed, Arafat was discussing with him ways to unite
their factions and to request Orabi's support for Arafat against
his rivals within the Fatah leadership. Shortly after Arafat left
the meeting, Orabi was thrown out of the window of a three-story
building and Syrian police loyal to
Hafez
al-Assad (Assad and Orabi were "close friends"), suspected
Arafat was involved in the incident. Assad appointed a panel, which
found Arafat and Abu Jihad guilty of the murder. Nonetheless, both
were pardoned by Syrian President
Salah
Jadid. The incident, however, brought Assad and Arafat on
unpleasant terms, which would show later when Assad became
President of Syria.
Leader of the Palestinians
On
November 13, 1966, Israel launched a major raid against the
Jordanian-administered West Bank
town of as-Samu
, in response to a Fatah-implemented roadside bomb
attack, which had killed three members of the Israeli security forces near the
southern Green
Line
border. In the resulting skirmish, scores of
Jordanian security forces were killed and 125 homes razed. This
raid was one of several factors that led to the 1967
Six-Day War.
The Six-Day war began when Israel launched a preemptive air strike
against
Egypt's air force on June
5, 1967.
The war ended in an Arab defeat and Israel's
occupation of several Arab territories, including the West Bank and
Gaza
Strip. Although Nasser and his Arab allies had
been defeated, Arafat and Fatah could claim a victory, in that the
majority of Palestinians, who had up to that time tended to align
and sympathize with individual Arab governments, now began to agree
that a 'Palestinian' solution of their dilemma was indispensable.
Many primarily Palestinian political parties, including
George Habash's
Arab Nationalist Movement,
Hajj Amin al-Husseini's
Arab Higher Committee, the
Islamic Liberation Front
and several Syrian-backed groups, virtually crumbled after their
sponsor governments' defeat.
Barely a week after the defeat, Arafat
crossed the Jordan
River
in disguise and entered the West Bank, where he set
up recruitment centers in Hebron
, the
Jerusalem area and Nablus
, and began
attracting both fighters and financiers for his cause.
At the same time, Nasser contacted Arafat through
Mohammed Heikal (one of Nasser's
advisers) and Arafat was declared by Nasser to be the 'leader of
the Palestinians'. In December,
Ahmad
Shukeiri resigned his post as
PLO
Chairman.
Yahya Hammuda took his
place and invited Arafat to join the organization. Fatah was
allocated 33 of 105 seats of the
PLO Executive Committee while 57
seats were left for several other
guerrilla factions.
Battle of Karameh
Throughout 1968, Fatah and other Palestinian
armed groups were the target of a major Israeli army operation in
the Jordanian village of Karameh
, where the Fatah headquarters—as well as a
mid-sized Palestinian refugee
camp—were located. The town's name is the
Arabic word for 'dignity', which elevated
its
symbolic power in the eyes of the
Arab people, especially after the Arab defeat
in 1967. The operation was in response to attacks, including
rockets strikes from Fatah and other Palestinian militias, within
the occupied West Bank. According to
Said
Aburish, the government of Jordan and a number of Fatah
commandos informed Arafat that large-scale Israeli military
preparations for an attack on the town were underway, prompting
fedayeen groups, such as George Habash's newly formed group the
Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and
Nayef Hawatmeh's breakaway organization the
Democratic
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), to withdraw their
forces from the town. Though advised by a pro-Fatah Jordanian
divisional commander to withdraw his men and headquarters to nearby
hills, Arafat refused, stating, "We want to convince the world that
there are those in the Arab world who will not withdraw or flee".
Aburish writes that it was on Arafat's orders that Fatah remained,
and that the
Jordanian
Army agreed to back them if heavy fighting ensued.
On the night of 21 March, the IDF attacked Karameh with heavy
weaponry, armored vehicles and fighter jets. Fatah held its ground,
surprising the Israeli military. As Israel's forces intensified
their campaign, the Jordanian Army became involved, causing the
Israelis to retreat in order to avoid a full-scale war. By the end
of the battle, nearly 150 Fatah gunmen had been killed, as well as
twenty Jordanian soldiers and twenty-eight Israeli soldiers.
Despite the higher Arab death toll, Fatah considered themselves
victorious because of the Israeli army's rapid withdrawal. Arafat
himself was on the battlefield, but the details of his involvement
are unclear. However, his allies–as well as
Israeli intelligence–confirm that he urged his men
throughout the battle to hold their ground and continue
fighting.
The battle was covered in detail by
Time, and Arafat's face appeared on the
cover of the 13 December 1968 issue, bringing his image to the
world for the first time. Amid the post-war environment, the
profiles of Arafat and Fatah were raised by this important turning
point, and he came to be regarded as a national hero who dared to
confront Israel. With mass applause from the
Arab World, financial donations increased
significantly, and Fatah's weaponry and equipment improved. The
group's numbers swelled as many young Arabs, including thousands of
non-Palestinians, joined the ranks of Fatah.
At the
Palestinian National
Council in Cairo on February
3, 1969, Yahya Hammuda stepped down from his chairmanship of the
PLO, and Arafat took over. He became
Commander-in-Chief of the Palestinian
Revolutionary Forces two years later, and in 1973, became the head
of the PLO's political department.
Jordan
In the late 1960s, tensions between Palestinians and the Jordanian
government increased greatly; heavily armed Arab resistance
elements had created a virtual
"state within a state" in
Jordan, eventually controlling several strategic positions in that
country. After their victory in the Battle of Karameh, Fatah and
other Palestinian militias began taking control of civil life in
Jordan. They set up roadblocks, publicly humiliated Jordanian
police forces, molested women and levied illegal taxes—all of which
Arafat either condoned or ignored.
King Hussein considered this a growing
threat to his kingdom's sovereignty and security, and attempted to
disarm the militias. However, in order to avoid a military
confrontation with opposition forces, Hussein dismissed several of
his anti-PLO cabinet officials, including some of his own family
members, and invited Arafat to become
Prime Minister of Jordan. Arafat
refused, citing his belief in the need for a
Palestinian state with Palestinian
leadership.
Despite Hussein's intervention, militant actions in Jordan
continued.
On 15 September 1970, the PFLP hijacked
five planes and landed three of them at Dawson's
Field
, located east of Amman
.
After the passengers were moved to other locations, three of the
planes were blown up.
This tarnished Arafat's image in many
western nations, including the United States
, who held him responsible for controlling
Palestinian factions that belonged to the PLO. Arafat,
bowing to pressure from Arab governments, publicly condemned the
hijackings and suspended the PFLP from any guerrilla actions for a
few weeks.
(He had taken the same action after the PFLP
attacked Athens Airport
.) The Jordanian government moved to regain control
over its territory, and the next day, King Hussein declared
martial law. On the same day,
Arafat became supreme commander of the PLA.
As the conflict raged, other Arab governments attempted to
negotiate a peaceful resolution. As part of this effort, Gamal
Abdel Nasser led the first ever emergency
Arab League summit in Cairo on 21
September. Arafat's speech drew sympathy from attending Arab
leaders. Other heads of state took sides against Hussein, among
them
Muammar al-Gaddafi, who
mocked him and his schizophrenic father
King Talal. The attempt to establish a peace
agreement between the two sides failed. Nasser died of a massive
heart attack hours after the summit.
By 25 September, the Jordanian army achieved dominance, and two
days later Arafat and Hussein agreed to a ceasefire in Amman. The
Jordanian army inflicted heavy casualties on the
Palestinians—including civilians—who suffered approximately 3,500
fatalities. After repeated violations of the ceasefire from both
the PLO and the Jordanian Army, Arafat called for King Hussein to
be toppled. Responding to the threat, in June 1971, Hussein ordered
his forces to oust all remaining Palestinian fighters in northern
Jordan—which they accomplished. Arafat and a number of his forces,
including two high-ranking commanders,
Abu
Iyad and
Abu Jihad, were forced into
the northern corner of Jordan.
They relocated near the town of Jerash
, near the
border with Syria. With the help of
Munib Masri, a pro-Palestinian Jordanian cabinet
member, and
Fahd al-Khomeimi, the
Saudi ambassador to Jordan, Arafat managed to enter Syria with
nearly two thousand of his fighters. However, due to the hostility
of relations between Arafat and Syrian President
Hafez al-Assad (who had previously ousted
President
Salah Jadid), the Palestinian
fighters crossed the border into Lebanon to join PLO forces in that
country, where they set up their new headquarters.
Lebanon
Terrorism in the 1970s and official recognition
Because of Lebanon's weak central government, the PLO was able to
operate virtually as an independent state. During this time in the
1970s, numerous
leftist PLO
groups took up arms against Israel, carrying out attacks against
civilians as well as military targets within Israel and outside of
it.
Two major incidents occurred in 1972.
The Fatah subgroup
Black September hijacked a
Sabena flight en route to Vienna
and forced
it to land at the Ben Gurion International
Airport
in Lod
,
Israel. The PFLP and the Japanese Red Army carried out a shooting
rampage at the same airport
, killing twenty-four civilians. Israel later
claimed that the assassination of PFLP spokesman
Ghassan Kanafani was a response to the
PFLP's involvement in masterminding the latter attack. Two days
later, various PLO factions retaliated by bombing a bus station,
killing eleven civilians.
At the
Munich Olympic Games,
Black September kidnapped and killed eleven Israeli athletes.
A number
of sources, including Mohammed Oudeh
(Abu Daoud), one of the masterminds of the Munich
massacre
, and
Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli
historian, have stated that Black September was an armed branch of
Fatah used for paramilitary operations. According to Abu
Daoud's 1999 book, "Arafat was briefed on plans for the Munich
hostage-taking." The killings were internationally condemned. In
1973–74, Arafat closed Black September down, ordering the PLO to
withdraw from acts of violence outside Israel, the West Bank and
Gaza Strip.
In 1974, the PNC approved the
Ten Point
Program (drawn up by Arafat and his advisers), and proposed a
compromise with the Israelis. It called for a Palestinian national
authority over every part of "liberated Palestinian territory",
which refers to areas captured by Arab forces in the 1948
Arab-Israeli War (present-day West Bank,
East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip). This caused
discontent among several of the PLO factions; the PFLP, DFLP and
other parties formed a breakaway organization, the
Rejectionist Front.
Israel and the US have alleged also that Arafat was involved in the
1973 Khartoum
diplomatic assassinations, in which five diplomats and five
others were killed.
A 1973 United
States Department of State
document, declassified in 2006, concluded "The
Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full
knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat." Arafat
denied any involvement in the operation and insisted it was carried
out independently by the Black September group. Israel claimed that
Arafat was in ultimate control over these organizations and
therefore had not abandoned terrorism.
Also in 1974, the PLO was declared the "sole legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people" and admitted to full
membership of the Arab League at the
Rabat Summit. Arafat became the
first representative of a
non-governmental organization
to address a
plenary session of the
UN General Assembly.
Arafat was also the first leader to address the UN while wearing a
holster, although it did not contain a
gun. In his
United
Nations address, Arafat condemned Zionism, but said, "Today I
have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do
not let the olive branch fall from my hand." His speech increased
international sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
Fatah involvement in Lebanese Civil War
Although hesitant at first to take sides in the conflict, Arafat
and Fatah played an important role in the
Lebanese Civil War. Succumbing to
pressure from PLO sub-groups such as the PFLP, DFLP and the
Palestine Liberation
Front (PLF), Arafat aligned the PLO with the
Communist and
Nasserist
Lebanese National
Movement (LNM). The LNM was led by
Kamal Jumblatt, who had a friendly
relationship with Arafat and other PLO leaders. Although originally
aligned with Fatah,
Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad feared a
loss of influence in Lebanon and switched sides. He sent his army,
along with the Syrian-backed Palestinian factions of
as-Sa'iqa and the
Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command
(PFLP-GC) led by
Ahmad Jibril to fight
alongside the radical right-wing Christian forces against the PLO
and the LNM. The primary components of the Christian front were the
Maronite Phalangists loyal to
Bachir Gemayel and the
Tigers Militia—which was led by
Dany Chamoun, a son of former
President Camille Chamoun.
In February 1975, the Tigers shot an important pro-Palestinian
Lebanese MP, Ma'arouf Sa'ad, founder of the Popular Nasserite
Organization. His death, from his wounds, the following month, and
the
murder in April of that year of
twenty-seven Palestinians and Lebanese travelling on bus from
Sabra and Shatila to the Tel al-Zaatar
refugee camp by Phalangist forces, precipitated the Lebanese Civil
War. Arafat was reluctant to respond with force, but many other
Fatah and PLO members felt otherwise. For example, the DFLP carried
out several attacks against the
Lebanese
Army.
In 1976, an alliance of Christian militias
with the backing of the Lebanese and Syrian
Army besieged Tel al-Zaatar camp in east Beirut
. The
PLO and LNM retaliated by attacking the town of
Damour, a Phalangist stronghold. Over 330
people were killed and many more wounded. The Tel al-Zaatar camp
fell to the Christians after a six-month siege, and a
massacre followed in which thousands
of Palestinians were killed. Arafat and Abu Jihad blamed themselves
for not successfully organizing a rescue effort.
PLO cross-border raids against Israel grew during the late 1970s.
One of
the most severe—known as the Coastal Road massacre
—occurred on 11 March 1978. A force of nearly a
dozen Fatah fighters landed their boats near a major coastal road
connecting the city of Haifa
with
Tel
Aviv-Yafo
.
There they hijacked a bus and sprayed gunfire inside and at passing
vehicles, killing thirty-seven civilians. In response, the IDF
launched
Operation
Litani three days later, with the goal of taking control of
Southern Lebanon up to the
Litani
River.
The IDF achieved this goal, and Arafat
withdrew PLO forces north into Beirut.
After Israel withdrew from Lebanon, cross-border hostilities
between PLO forces and Israel continued, though from August 1981 to
May 1982, the PLO adopted a unilateral policy of refraining from
responding to provocations. The Israeli invasion of 1982 was
designed, according to some sources, to crush Palestinian national
aspirations by uprooting their forces from proximity to the West
Bank. However, the Israeli invasion could just as easily be
described as an attempt by Israel to end years of shellings,
infiltrations, and killings of Israeli civilians by PLO attackers
from Lebanon.
Beirut was soon besieged and bombarded by
the IDF; Arafat declared the city to be the "Hanoi
and
Stalingrad
of the Israeli army." The Civil War's first
phase ended and Arafat—who was commanding Fatah forces at Tel
al-Zaatar—narrowly escaped with assistance from Saudi and Kuwaiti
diplomats.
Towards the end the siege, the US and
European governments brokered an agreement
guaranteeing safe passage for Arafat and the PLO—guarded by a
multinational force of eight hundred US Marines supported by the
US Navy—to exile in Tunis
.
Arafat
returned to Lebanon a year after his eviction from Beirut, this
time establishing himself in the northern city of Tripoli
. This time Arafat was expelled by a fellow
Palestinian working under Hafez al-Assad. Arafat did not return to
Lebanon after his second expulsion, though many Fatah fighters
did.
Tunisia
Arafat
and Fatah's center for operations was based in Tunis, the capital
of Tunisia
, until 1993. In 1985 he narrowly survived an
Israeli assassination attempt when
Israeli Air Force F-15s bombed his headquarters there as part of
Operation Wooden Leg, leaving 73 people
dead. Arafat had gone out jogging that morning.
First Intifada
During the 1980s, Arafat received financial assistance from Libya,
Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which allowed him to reconstruct the
badly-battered PLO. This was particularly useful during the
First Intifada in December 1987,
which began as an uprising of Palestinian youth against the Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The word Intifada in
Arabic is literally translated as "tremor", however, it is
generally defined as an uprising or revolt.
The first
stage of the Intifada was a response to an incident at the Erez checkpoint
where an Israeli military vehicle hit a group of
Palestinian laborers, killing four of them. However, within
weeks and partly upon consistent requests by Abu Jihad, Arafat
attempted to direct the uprising, which lasted until 1992–93. Abu
Jihad had previously been assigned the responsibility of the
Palestinian territories within the PLO command and according to
biographer
Said Aburish, had
"impressive knowledge of local conditions" in the
Israeli-occupied territories.
On April 16, 1988, as the Intifada was raging, Abu Jihad was
assassinated in his Tunis household,
allegedly by an Israeli hit squad.
Arafat considered Abu Jihad a PLO
counterweight to local Palestinian leadership, and led a funeral
procession for him in Damascus
.
The most common tactic used by Palestinians during the Intifada was
throwing stones at IDF tanks, which became a symbol of the
uprising. The local leadership in some West Bank towns commenced
non-violent protests against Israeli occupation by engaging in
tax resistance and other
boycotts. Israel responded by confiscating large sums of money in
house-to-house raids. As the Intifada came to a close, new armed
Palestinian groups—in particular
Hamas and the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ)—began targeting Israeli civilians with the new tactic of
suicide bombing and internal
fighting amongst the Palestinians increased dramatically.
Change in direction
On 15 November 1988, the PLO proclaimed the independent
State of Palestine. Though
he had frequently been accused of and associated with terrorism, in
speeches on 13 and 14 December Arafat accepted
UN Security
Council Resolution 242, Israel's right "to exist in peace and
security" and repudiated 'terrorism in all its forms, including
state terrorism'. Arafat's statements were greeted with approval by
the US administration, which had long insisted on these statements
as a necessary starting point for official discussions between the
US and the PLO. These remarks from Arafat indicated a shift away
from one of the PLO's primary aims—the destruction of Israel (as
entailed in the
Palestinian National
Covenant)–and toward the establishment of two separate
entities: an Israeli state within the 1949 armistice lines, and an
Arab state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On 2 April 1989,
Arafat was elected by the Central Council of the Palestine National
Council, the governing body of the PLO, to be the president of the
proclaimed State of Palestine.
Prior to
the Gulf War in 1990–91, when the
Intifada's intensity began to wear down, Arafat supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and opposed
the US-led coalition attack on Iraq. He made this decision
without the consent of other leading members of Fatah and the PLO.
Arafat's top aide Abu Iyad vouched to stay neutral and opposed an
alliance with Saddam; On 17 January 1991, Abu Iyad was assassinated
by the pro-Iraqi
Abu Nidal Organization.
Arafat's decision also severed relations with Egypt and many of the
oil-producing Arab states that supported the US-led coalition. Many
in the US also used Arafat's position as a reason to disregard his
claims to being a partner for peace. After the end of hostilities,
many Arab states that backed the coalition cut off funds to the PLO
and began providing financial support for the organization's rival
Hamas as well as other Islamist groups.
In 1990, Arafat married
Suha Tawil, a
Palestinian Christian when he
was 61 and Suha, 27.
Before their marriage, she was working as a
secretary for Arafat in Tunis after her mother introduced her to
him in France
.
Prior to Arafat's marriage, he adopted fifty Palestinian
war orphans.
Arafat
narrowly escaped death again on 7 April 1992, when his aircraft
crash-landed in the Libyan
Desert
during a sandstorm. Two pilots and an
engineer were killed; Arafat was bruised and shaken.
Palestinian Authority and peace negotiations
Oslo Accords
In the early 1990s, Arafat and leading Fatah officials engaged the
Israeli government in a series of secret talks and negotiations
that led to the
1993 Oslo Accords. The
agreement called for the implementation of Palestinian self-rule in
portions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five year period,
along with an immediate halt to and gradual removal of Israeli
settlements in those areas. The accords called for a Palestinian
police force to be formed from local recruits and Palestinians
abroad, to patrol areas of self-rule. Authority over the various
fields of rule, including education and culture,
social welfare,
direct taxation and tourism, would be transferred
to the Palestinian interim government. Both parties agreed also on
forming a committee that would establish cooperation and
coordination dealing with specific economic sectors, including
utilities, industry, trade and communication.
Prior to signing the accords, Arafat—as Chairman of the PLO and its
official representative—signed two letters renouncing violence and
officially recognizing Israel. In return, Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, on behalf of Israel, officially
recognized the PLO.
The following year, Arafat and Rabin were awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, along with
Shimon Peres. The Palestinian reaction was
mixed. The
Rejectionist Front of
the PLO allied itself with Islamists in a common opposition against
the agreements. It was rejected also by
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria,
and Jordan as well as by many Palestinian intellectuals and the
local leadership of the Palestinian territories. However, the
inhabitants of the territories generally accepted the agreements
and Arafat's promise for peace and economic well-being.
Establishing authority in the territories
In accordance with the terms of the Oslo agreement, Arafat was
required to implement PLO authority in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. He insisted that financial support was imperative to
establishing this authority and needed it to secure the acceptance
of the agreements by the Palestinians living in those areas.
However, the Gulf Arab States—Arafat's usual source for financial
backing—still refused to provide him and the PLO with any major
donations because of his sympathy for Iraq during the Gulf War, in
1991.
Ahmed Qurei—a key Fatah negotiator
during the negotiations in Oslo—openly announced that the PLO was
bankrupt.
In 1994,
Arafat moved to Gaza
City
, one of the territories controlled by the Palestinian National
Authority (PNA)—the provisional entity created by the Oslo
Accords. Arafat became the
President
and
Prime
Minister of the PNA, the Commander of the
PLA and the
Speaker of
the
PLC. In July,
after the PNA was declared the official government of the
Palestinians, the
Basic Laws
of the Palestinian National Authority was published, in three
different versions by the PLO. Arafat proceeded with creating a
structure for the PNA. He established an
executive committee or cabinet
composed of twenty members.
Arafat also took the liberty to replace and
assign mayors and city councils for major cities such as Gaza and
Nablus. He
began subordinating non-governmental organizations that dealt in
education, health, and social affairs under his authority by
replacing their elected leaders and directors with PNA officials
loyal to him. He then appointed himself chairman of the Palestinian
financial organization that was created by the
World Bank to control most aid money towards
helping the new Palestinian entity.
Arafat established a Palestinian police force, named the
Preventive Security Service
(PSS), that became active on May 13. It was mainly composed of PLA
soldiers and foreign Palestinian volunteers. Arafat assigned
Mohammed Dahlan and
Jibril Rajoub to head the organization.
Amnesty International accused
Arafat and the PNA leadership for failing to adequately investigate
abuses by the PSS (including torture and unlawful killings) of
political opponents and dissidents as well as the arrests of human
rights activists.
On July
24, 1995, Arafat's wife Suha gave birth to a daughter in Sorbonne
, France.
She was named Zahwa after Arafat's deceased mother.
Throughout November-December 1995, Arafat
toured dozens of Palestinian cities and towns that were evacuated
by Israeli forces including Jenin
, Ramallah,
al-Bireh
, Nablus, Qalqilyah
and Tulkarm
, declaring them "liberated". The PNA also
gained control of the West Bank's
postal service during this period. On 20 January 1996, Arafat
was elected president of the PNA, with an overwhelming 88.2%
majority (the only other candidate was charity organizer
Samiha Khalil). However, because
Hamas, the DFLP and other popular opposition movements
chose to boycott the presidential elections, the choices were
limited. Arafat's landslide victory guaranteed Fatah 51 of the 88
seats in the PLC. After Arafat was elected to the post of President
of the PNA, he was often referred to as the
Ra'is,
(literally president in Arabic), although he spoke of himself as
"the general".In 1997, the PLC accused the executive branch of the
PNA of financial mismanagement causing the resignation of four
members of Arafat's cabinet. Arafat refused to resign his
post.
Other peace agreements
In mid-1996,
Benjamin Netanyahu
was
elected
Prime Minister of Israel by
a margin of just one percent. Palestinian-Israeli relations grew
even more hostile as a result of continued conflict. Despite the
Israel-PLO accord, Netanyahu opposed the idea of Palestinian
statehood. In 1998, US President
Bill
Clinton persuaded the two leaders to meet. The resulting
Wye River Memorandum detailed
the steps to be taken by the Israeli government and PNA to complete
the peace process.
Arafat continued negotiations with Netanyahu's successor,
Ehud Barak, at the
Camp David Summit in July 2000. Due
partly to his own politics (Barak was from the leftist
Labor Party, whereas Netanyahu was from
the
rightist Likud Party) and partly due to insistence for
compromise by President Clinton, Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian
state in 73% of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip. The
Palestinian percentage of sovereignty would extend to 91% (94%
excluding Jerusalem) over a ten to twenty-five year period.
In
exchange for the withheld areas of the West Bank where the main
Israeli settlement blocks were situated, Barak offered the
equivalent area in the Israeli Negev desert
. Also included in the offer were the return
of a small number of refugees and compensation for those not
allowed to return. Arafat rejected Barak's offer and refused to
make an immediate counter-offer. He stated to President Clinton
that, "the Arab leader who would surrender Jerusalem is not born
yet". The move was criticized even by a member of his own
negotiating team and cabinet,
Nabil Amr.
Negotiations continued at the
Taba
summit in January 2001; this time, Ehud Barak pulled out of the
talks to campaign in the Israeli elections. In October and December
2001, suicide bombings by Palestinian militant groups increased and
Israeli counter strikes intensified, causing the outbreak of the
Second Intifada. Following the
election of
Ariel Sharon in February,
the peace process took a steep downfall. Palestinian elections
scheduled for January 2002 were postponed—the stated reason was an
inability to campaign due to the emergency conditions imposed by
the Intifada, as well as IDF incursions and restrictions on
freedom of movement in the
Palestinian territories.
In the same month, Sharon ordered Arafat to
be confined to his Mukata'a headquarters in Ramallah
, following a suicide bombing in the Israeli city of
Hadera
; US
President George W. Bush supported Sharon's action, claiming that
Arafat was "an obstacle to the peace".
Political survival
Relations with Hamas and other militant groups
Arafat's long personal and political survival was taken by most
Western commentators as a sign of his mastery of
asymmetric warfare and his skill as a
tactician, given the extremely dangerous nature of politics of the
Middle East and the frequency of assassinations. Some commentators
believe his survival was largely due to Israel's fear that he could
become a
martyr for the Palestinian cause if
he were assassinated or even arrested by Israel. Others believe
that Israel refrained from taking action against Arafat because it
feared Arafat less than
Hamas and the other
Islamist movements gaining support over Fatah. The complex and
fragile web of relations between the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and
other Arab states contributed also to Arafat's longevity as the
leader of the Palestinians.
Arafat's ability to adapt to new tactical and political situations
was perhaps tested by the rise of the Hamas and
PIJ organizations, Islamist groups
espousing
rejectionist the
destruction of Israel. These groups often bombed non-military
targets, such as malls and movie theaters, to increase the
psychological damage and civilian casualties. In the 1990s, these
groups seemed to threaten Arafat's capacity to hold together a
unified nationalist organization with a goal of statehood. They
appeared to be out of Arafat's influence and control, and were
actively fighting with Fatah. Some allege that activities of these
groups were tolerated by Arafat as a means of applying pressure on
Israel.
In 2002, the Arab League made an offer to recognize Israel in
exchange for an Israeli retreat from all territories captured in
the Six-Day War and statehood for the Palestinians governed by
Arafat's PNA. Shortly afterward, an attack carried out by Hamas
militants killed twenty-nine Israeli civilians celebrating
Passover including many senior citizens. In
response, Israel launched
Operation Defensive Shield, a
major military offensive into major
West Bank cities.
Some Israeli government officials opined in 2002 that the armed
Fatah sub-group
al-Aqsa
Martyrs' Brigades commenced attacks towards Israel in order to
compete with Hamas. On May 6, the Israeli government released a
report, based in part on documents captured during the Israeli
occupation of Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, which included copies
of papers signed by Arafat authorizing funding for al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades' activities.
Attempts to marginalize
Persistent attempts by the Israeli government to identify another
Palestinian leader to represent the Palestinian people failed.
Arafat was enjoying the support of groups that, given his own
history, would normally have been quite wary of dealing with or
supporting him.
Marwan Barghouti (a
leader of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades) emerged as a possible
replacement during the Second Intifada, but Israel had him arrested
for being involved in the killing of twenty-six civilians, and he
was sentenced to five life terms.
Arafat was finally allowed to leave his compound on 2 May after
intense negotiations led to a settlement: six PFLP
militants—including the organization's secretary-general
Ahmad Sa'adat—wanted by Israel, who had been
holed up with Arafat in his compound, would not be turned over to
Israel, but neither would they be held in custody by the PNA.
Rather, a
combination of British and American security personnel would ensure
that the wanted men remained imprisoned in Jericho
. (The men were later captured by Israel in
an overnight raid on the prison in 2006.) With that, and a promise
that he would issue a call to the Palestinians to halt attacks on
Israelis, Arafat was released. He issued such a call on May 8, but
as with previous attempts, it was largely ignored. In 2003, Arafat
ceded his post as Prime Minister to
Mahmoud Abbas amid pressures by the US.
In 2004, President Bush dismissed Arafat as a negotiating partner,
saying he had "failed as a leader" and accused him of undercutting
Abbas when he was prime minister (Abbas resigned the same year he
was given the position). Arafat had a mixed relationship at best
with the leaders of other Arab nations. His support from Arab
leaders tended to increase whenever he was pressured by Israel; for
example, when Israel declared in 2003 it had made the decision, in
principle, to remove him from the Israeli-controlled West Bank.
In an
interview with the Arabic news network Al-Jazeera, Arafat responded to Ariel
Sharon's suggestion that he be exiled from the Palestinian
territories permanently, by stating, "Is it his [Sharon's]
homeland or ours? We were planted here before the Prophet
Abraham came, but it looks like they [Israelis] don't understand
history or geography."
Financial dealings
In August 2002, the
Israeli Military
Intelligence Chief alleged that Arafat's personal wealth was in
the range of USD $1.3 billion,.
In 2003 the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) conducted an audit of the PNA and stated
that Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank
account controlled by Arafat and the PNA Chief Economic Financial
adviser. However, the IMF did not claim that there were any
improprieties, and it specifically stated that most of the funds
had been used to invest in Palestinian assets, both internally and
abroad.
However in 2003, a team of American accountants–hired by Arafat's
own
finance ministry–began
examining Arafat's finances; this team reached a different
conclusion.
The team claimed that part of the
Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close
to $1 billion, with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian
cell phone company and venture capital
funds in the US and the Cayman Islands
. The head of the investigation stated that
"although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like
Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the
Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of
these dealings were made public."
Although Arafat lived a modest lifestyle,
Dennis Ross, former Middle East negotiator for
Presidents
George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, stated that
Arafat's "walking-around money" financed a vast patronage system
known as
neopatrimonialism.
According to
Salam Fayyad—a former
World Bank official whom Arafat appointed
Finance
Minister of the PNA in 2002—Arafat's commodity monopolies could
accurately be seen as gouging his own people, "especially in Gaza
which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable
and immoral." Fayyad claims that Arafat used $20 million from
public funds to pay the leadership of the PNA security forces (the
Preventive Security Service) alone.
Fuad Shubaki, former financial aide to Arafat, told the Israeli
security service
Shin Bet that Arafat used
several million dollars of aid money to buy weapons and support
militant groups. An investigation by the
European Union into claims that their funds
were misused by the Palestinian Authority found no evidence that
funds were diverted to finance terrorist activities.
Illness and death
First reports of Arafat's treatment by his doctors for what his
spokesman said was the "
flu" came on 25
October 2004, after he vomited during a meeting. His condition
deteriorated in the following days. Following visits by other
doctors, including teams from Tunisia, Jordan, and Egypt—and
agreement by Israel not to block his return—Arafat was taken on a
French government jet to the
Percy military hospital in
Clamart, a suburb of Paris. According to one of his
doctors, Arafat was suffering from
Idiopathic thrombocytopenic
purpura (ITP), an immunologically-mediated decrease in the
number of circulating platelets to abnormally low levels. On 3
November, he lapsed into a gradually deepening coma. In the ensuing
days, Arafat's health was the subject of some speculation, with
suspicion that he was suffering from
poisoning or
AIDS. Various
sources speculated that Arafat was
comatose, in a "vegetative state" or dead, however,
Palestinian authorities and Arafat's Jordanian doctor denied
reports that Arafat was brain dead and had been kept on life
support.
A controversy erupted between officials of the PNA and Suha Arafat
when officials from the PNA traveled to France to see Yasser
Arafat. Suha stated "They are trying to bury Abu Ammar [Arafat]
alive".
French law forbids physicians
from discussing the condition of their patients with anybody with
the exception, in case of grave prognosis, of close relatives.
Accordingly, all communications concerning Arafat's health had to
be authorized by his wife. Palestinian officials expressed regret
that the news about Yasser Arafat was "filtered" by her.
The next day, chief surgeon Christian Estripeau of Percy reported
that Arafat's condition had worsened, and that he had fallen into a
deeper coma.
Sheikh Taissir
Tamimi, the head of the Islamic court of the Palestinian
territories—who held a vigil at Arafat's bedside—visited Arafat and
declared that it was out of the question to disconnect him from
life support since, according to him, such an action is prohibited
in
Islam.
Arafat was pronounced dead at 3:30 am
UTC on 11 November at the age of
75. The exact cause of his illness is unknown. Tamimi described it
as "a very painful scene." When Arafat's death was announced, the
Palestinian people went into a state of mourning, with
Qur'anic mourning prayers emitted from mosque
loudspeakers and tires burning in the street. One obituary at
Socialist
World said: "Many Palestinians will view the death of Yasser
Arafat with a mixture of sadness and a wish that the Palestinian
Authority he led, had done much more to end the poverty and
oppression that blights their lives".
The
Canard
Enchaîné newspaper reported alleged leaks of information
by unnamed medical sources at Percy hospital who had access to
Arafat and his medical file. According to the newspaper, the
doctors at Percy hospital suspected, from Arafat's arrival, grave
lesions of the liver responsible for an alteration of the
composition of the blood; Arafat was therefore placed in a
hematology service.
Leukemia was "soundly ruled out". According to the
same source, the reason why this diagnosis of
cirrhosis could not be made available was that, in
the mind of the general public, cirrhosis is generally associated
with the consequences of alcohol abuse. Even though the diagnosis
was not of an alcoholic cirrhosis and Arafat was not known for
consuming any alcohol, there was a likelihood of rumors. The source
explained that Arafat's living conditions did little to improve the
situation. Thus, according to the source, the probable causes of
the disease were multiple; Arafat's coma was a consequence of the
worsened cirrhosis. The French newspaper
Le
Monde quoted doctors as saying that he suffered from "an
unusual blood disease and a liver problem".
After Arafat's death, the
French Ministry of Defense said
that Arafat's medical file would be transmitted to only his
next of kin. It was determined that
Arafat's nephew and PNA envoy to the UN,
Nasser al-Qudwa, was a close enough
relative, thus working around Suha Arafat's silence on her
husband's illness. Nasser al-Qudwa was given a copy of Arafat's
558-page medical file by the French Ministry of Defense.
Rumours about cause of death
Bassam Abu Sharif, Arafat's former
advisor, claimed that the Mossad poisoned Arafat through his
medications. Another "senior Israeli physician" claimed in the
article in
Haaretz that it was "a classic case of food
poisoning", probably caused by a meal eaten four hours before he
fell ill that may have contained a toxin such as
ricin, rather than a standard bacterial poisoning.
However, in the same week as the report in
Haaretz,
The New York Times published a separate report, also based
on access to Arafat's medical records, which claimed that it was
highly unlikely that Arafat had
food
poisoning. Both publications further speculated that the cause
of death may have been an infection of an unknown nature or origin.
However, rumors of Arafat's poisoning have remained popular around
the world, and especially among the Arab populace. Al-Kurdi
lamented the fact that Arafat's widow Suha had refused an autopsy,
which would have answered many questions regarding cause of death.
In 2005, al-Kurdi called for the creation of an independent
commission to carry out investigations concerning Arafat's
suspicious death, stating, "any doctor would tell you that these
are the symptoms of a poisoning".
Paris deputy Claude
Goasguen asked for a parliamentary inquiry commission on the death
of Arafat in an attempt to quell rumors. The French government
insisted that there was no evidence Arafat had been poisoned;
otherwise, a criminal investigation would have necessarily been
opened.
In September 2005, the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz reported that French experts could not
determine the cause of Arafat's death. The paper quoted an Israeli
AIDS expert who claimed that Arafat bore all the symptoms of AIDS,
a hypothesis later rejected by
The New York Times. Ashraf al-Kurdi,
a personal physician of Arafat for twenty years who had also
treated the
Hashemite kings of
Jordan, later declared that nothing in Arafat's medical report
mentioned the existence of such an infection.
Aftermath
Funeral
On 11 November, the
French
military Honor Guard held a funeral
for Arafat at a military airport near Paris. President
Jacques Chirac stood alone beside Arafat's
body for about ten minutes in a last show of respect for a leader
he hailed as, "a man of courage". The next day, Arafat was flown to
Egypt's capital Cairo for another brief
military funeral there, before his burial
in Ramallah, later that day. The funeral was attended by several
heads of states, prime ministers and foreign ministers. Egypt's top
Muslim cleric
Sayed Tantawi
led mourning prayers preceding the funeral procession.
Israel
refused Arafat's wish to be buried near the al-Aqsa
Mosque
or anywhere in Jerusalem, citing widespread security concerns.
Following
his Cairo procession, Arafat was "temporarily" laid to rest within
his former
headquarters
in Ramallah; tens of thousands of Palestinians
attended the ceremony. Also attending were at least one
Jewish peace advocate and a Christian minister. After
Sheikh Taissir Tamimi discovered that
Arafat was buried improperly and in a coffin–which is not in
accordance with
Islamic law–Arafat was
reburied on the morning of November 13, at around 3:00 am. On
November 10, 2007, prior to the third anniversary of Arafat's
death, Abbas unveiled a
mausoleum for
Arafat near his temporary tomb in commemoration of him.
Successor
Upon Arafat's death,
PLC Speaker
Rawhi Fattouh succeeded Arafat as
interim President of the PNA. PLO Secretary-General
Mahmoud Abbas was selected Chairman of the
PLO, and
Farouk Kaddoumi became head
of Fatah. The PNA and the leadership of
Palestinian refugee camps in
Lebanon declared forty days of mourning for Arafat. Abbas won the
January 2005
presidential election by a comfortable margin, solidifying
himself as the successor to Arafat as leader of the
Palestinians.
See also
Notes
Further reading
- Sela, Avraham. "Arafat, Yasser."
The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East.
Ed. Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002.
pp. 166–171.
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