Yasser Arafat

Source

• Born: 24 August 1929
• Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt (?)
• Died: 11 November 2004 (complications from a blood disorder)
• Best Known As: Head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, 1969-2004

Name at birth: Mohammed Yasser Abdul-Ra'ouf Qudwa Al-Husseini

An Arab, Yasser Arafat was among those Palestinians who resisted the creation of a Jewish state in 1948. During the 1950s and '60 Arafat led underground military operations as the leader of the guerilla group Al Fatah, and in 1969 he was named head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). By 1974 he was recognized as the one key spokesman for the Palestinian people. The PLO's attacks on Jewish citizens, most notably the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, gave Arafat a worldwide reputation as a terrorist leader, yet in the 1980s he also managed to take on the role of a statesman willing to use diplomacy to achieve his ends. Secret meetings in Norway with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1993 resulted in a peace agreement, and the three men shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. In 1996 Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian National Authority. After further violent struggles in the region, Arafat was put under virtual house arrest in his West Bank compound by Israeli troops for more than two years. In October of 2004 Arafat was airlifted to Paris for treatment of a blood disorder; after two weeks of confusion and rumors about his health, he died in Paris on 11 November 2004. He was succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas.

Before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Jerusalem was part of Palestine, a region created by British mandate after World War I. Arafat's official biography listed his birthplace as Jerusalem, Palestine, but other sources list his birthplace as Cairo, Egypt; it is generally believed that Arafat listed Jerusalem to solidify his claim as a Palestinian leader.

(b. 24 Aug. 1929; d. 11 November 2004) Palestinian; chairman of PLO 1969 –  , President of Palestine National Authority 1996 – Arafat studied engineering at Cairo University 1952 – 6 and co-founded Al-Fatah (Conquest) in 1956 with Nasser's support. Abu Amar (Arafat's nom de guerre) established his political and military credentials through Fatah's battle against Israeli forces at Karameh in 1968. In 1969, Arafat became chairman of the PLO. Its goal, according to the Palestine National Charter of 1968, was the liberation of Palestine and the destruction of Israel through armed struggle. After Arab defeats in the wars of 1967 and 1973, the guerrilla and terrorist groups of the PLO intensified armed struggle against Israel, by cross-border raids from Lebanon and Jordan and such operations as hijacking an aircraft to Entebbe in 1976. A major setback occurred in September 1970 when the PLO was expelled from Jordan to Lebanon, after provoking civil war. A second devastating setback occurred in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon in an attempt to eradicate the PLO. Although the PLO's legitimacy had been recognized since 1974 by the Arab Heads of State and by the United Nations, Arafat now lost most Arab support and the impact of Palestinian armed struggle dwindled. He was forced to rethink the fundamentals of PLO strategy. Early in 1988, Arafat took over the organization of the Palestinian intifada (uprising) and, at the UN's Geneva meeting of 1988, he announced the PLO's recognition of Israel and abandonment of terrorism. This paved the way for the Baker peace plan of 1989 and the US-sponsored peace process — interrupted by the Gulf War — which culminated in the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993. Under these, Israel began a staged withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza in 1994, and limited Palestinian self-rule was achieved, within a highly precarious peace process.

Arafat, Yasser (1929-2004), Palestinian resistance leader and Arab statesman. Born in Cairo, Arafat moved with his family to Gaza in 1939. After becoming involved in anti-Israeli activities in the late 1940s, he entered the University of Cairo to study civil engineering and there became involved in student activist groups.

Arafat came to prominence with his election to the chairmanship of the Executive Committee of the PLO in 1969. Under his leadership, the PLO began its terror campaign against Israel designed to gain independence for Palestine, and Arafat was branded a ruthless terrorist. This campaign culminated with the forming of the intifada in 1987, aimed at undermining the Israeli administration in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Under his direction the PLO was transformed from a terrorist organization to a civil administration. In 1988, the PLO officially renounced the use of terrorism and recognized the state of Israel. Then in 1993, Arafat signed the Oslo Peace Accords with the Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, which ended the intifada and gave the occupied territories limited self-rule. For this, both Arafat and Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In January 1996, Arafat was elected by an overwhelming majority president of the Palestinian National Authority, the body set up to govern the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, the slow progress of the peace process has made it extremely difficult for him to keep Palestinian extremists in check. Late in 1998 he admitted that he was seriously ill, an unhappy development at a time when peace seems as elusive as ever.

— Robert Foley

Yasser Arafat (born 1929) was elected chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1969. Though originally an advocate of all-out guerrilla war, from 1974 on he and the PLO sometimes seemed to be seeking a negotiated resolution of the Palestinian problem. He was awarded the Joliot-Curie Gold Medal by the World Peace Council in 1975.

Yasser Arafat was born Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini on October 24, 1929 to a Palestinian family living in Cairo, Egypt. He was related, through his mother, to the Husseini family, who were prominent members of the Sunni Muslim community in Jerusalem. His youth was spent in Cairo and Jerusalem. At that time, the area of historic Palestine was ruled by the British, under a mandate (license) from the League of Nations. Palestine was also a magnet for Jewish immigrants from Europe, who sought to build a Jewish homeland there. Jewish immigration was opposed by most of the country's existing population, who for the most part were ethnic Arabs of both the Muslim and Christian faiths.

Youthful Politics

While still in his teens Arafat became involved with a Palestinian Arab nationalist group led by cousins from the Husseini family. When the British moved out of Palestine in 1948, fierce fighting broke out between the Jewish and Arab communities. The Jews were easily able to beat the Palestinians. As a result, around a million Palestinians were forced to flee their ancestral homeland and sought refuge in neighboring Arab nations. Two-thirds of prewar Palestine then became the Jewish state of Israel. The rest came under the control of two Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan.

After the Palestinians' 1948 defeat, Arafat went to Cairo, where he studied engineering. He founded a Palestinian student union, which expanded rapidly over the following years. At the end of the 1950s it was one of the main constituent groups in the new Palestinian nationalist movement "Fateh". (The name is a reverse acronym for Harakat al-Tahrir al-Filastinivva - the Palestinian Liberation Movement.)

Arafat was one of Fateh's most prominent founders and sat on the movement's central committee. Fateh rejected the many complex ideologies which were fought over in the Arab world in the late 1950s and rejected reliance on any of the existing Arab regimes. Its members argued that Palestinians should seek to regain their own country by their own efforts, which should include guerrilla warfare against Israel. This armed struggle was launched in 1965. The attacks did not seriously scar the Jewish military, but did increase Palestinian morale and Arafat's credibility.

Birth of the PLO

Meanwhile, in 1964, the Arab countries had created their own Palestinian confederation, which they called the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). At that stage the PLO did not take on the Israelis directly.

In 1967, the Israelis defeated the Arabs in the full scale Six-Day War. Israel managed to occupy the rest of historic Palestine, along with chunks of Egyptian and Syrian territory. The Arab states were discredited by their defeat in the Six-Day War and the Fateh guerrillas who had long criticized them seemed vindicated. In 1969, Fateh and its allies were able to take over the PLO apparatus, and Arafat was elected chairman of the executive committee.

Many guerrilla camps were set up in Jordan along the border with Israel. In September 1970 Jordan's King Hussein sent his army against these growing camps, killing many Palestinians in what was known as Black September. Lebanon then became the guerrillas' main base of military operations. After this, the PLO engaged in terrorist acts, including the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

The Peace Process

In October 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur War, trying to regain the lands Israel had occupied six years earlier. They did not succeed in regaining the lands by force, but their action stimulated American efforts to seek a negotiated settlement in the region. In 1974 the PLO's ruling body, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), voted to seek inclusion in such a settlement, calling for the creation of a Palestinian national authority in those two areas of historic Palestine which the Israelis had occupied in 1967. (These were the West Bank - known by the Israelis as Judea and Samaria - and the Gaza Strip.)

In November 1974 the support of the Arab states enabled Arafat to participate in a debate on the Middle East at the United Nations General Assembly. His famous words there were: "I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." But he failed to use his appearance to spell out the PLO's call for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, so the Israelis still refused to have any dealings with the PLO. In 1975, the United States government vowed to do likewise, at least until the PLO should openly recognize U.N. Security Council resolution 242 of 1967 and Israel's right to exist. Under pressure from Palestinian hardliners, Arafat and the PLO refused to satisfy this condition.

When Egypt's President Anwar Sadat launched his peace process with Israel in 1977-1979, the PLO opposed it. The Camp David accords signed by Egypt, Israel, and the United States in 1978 called for the institution of a Palestinian autonomy plan in the West Bank and Gaza, but this plan never went into effect. Most Palestinian residents of these occupied areas feared that 'autonomy' meant the continuation of Israeli rule, and they supported the PLO's call for an independent Palestinian state there.

In 1982 the Israeli government decided to try to smash the PLO's military capability in Lebanon. The Israeli army knocked out PLO positions in south Lebanon and encircled Arafat and his remaining forces in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. American diplomacy finally resulted in the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut.

In February 1983 the PNC voted to pursue a reconciliation with Jordan and Egypt, with a view to suing for peace with Israel. This angered the Syrians, who set about forming an internal PLO rebellion against Arafat's leadership. Then, in November 1984, Arafat convened a meeting of the PNC in the Jordanian capital. This provoked a final break with his pro-Syrian critics, and afterwards he felt freer to pursue his moves toward the Jordanians.

In February 1985, Arafat and King Hussein healed the rift which had divided them since 1970 and agreed on a joint strategy toward Israel. Their announced aim was the creation of a confederation between Jordan and a Palestinian entity which would be established in the West Bank and Gaza. They sought the help of the United States in pressing the Israelis to agree to this. One obstacle to be overcome was the Americans' ten-year-old ban on talking to the PLO. In midsummer 1985, plans were made for a series of diplomatic moves which would include Arafat's open acceptance of resolution 242. But by early 1986 King Hussein broke off negotiations with Arafat, citing PLO refusal to compromise.

The Oslo Accord was signed by Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the fall of 1993. The accord placed the city of Jericho, the Israeli occupied Gaza Strip, and eventually the remainder of the West Bank under Palestinian self-rule. Arafat was elected president in January 1996.

Late in 1996, Rabin's successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, signed the Hebron agreement with Arafat which removed Israeli occupiers from the last occupied city in the West Bank. In return, Arafat promised to amend the portion of the Palestinian National Charter which calls for the destruction of Israel.

Return to the Status Quo

The decision by Israel to build homes in Jerusalem started up the terrorism campaign in the Middle East. The resulting hostility between the Israelis and the Palestinians placed the peace process on very shaky ground. Jewish settlement in Jerusalem remains a controversial issue.

Further Reading

The major biography of Arafat is Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker (1984). An earlier and more critical biography, which contains many errors, is Thomas Kiernan, Arafat: The Man and the Myth (1976). The politics of the PLO are detailed in Quandt, Jabber, and Lesch, The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism (1973), and Helena Cobban, The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power and Politics (1984). One interesting biographical account by a close Arafat colleague is Abu Iyad with Eric Rouleau, My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle (1981). Additional Arafat articles include "Don't Insult Me With an Offer Like That," Time (June 23, 1997), and "Hope and Fear," Scholastic Update (September 20, 1996).

For more information on Yasir 'Arafat, visit Britannica.com.

1929 -

Chairman of al-Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and president of the Palestinian Authority.

Between early 1969 and early 1994, Yasir Arafat (also Yasser Arafat) was transformed from a guerrilla leader advocating armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine to the president of the quasi-state of Palestine after negotiations with Israel, which had long denounced him as a terrorist. Despite frequent quarrels with rivals and subordinates, no other figure has been as closely identified with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or the Palestinian national struggle as Arafat. Born Muhammad Abd al-Raʾuf al-Arafat al-Qudwa, "Yasir" became Arafat's nickname during his early guerrilla days. He has since gone by Yasir Abd al-Raʾuf Arafat or just Yasir Arafat, except when using the nom de guerre Abu Ammar. Arafat and his family have always insisted that he was born 4 August 1929, in his mother's family home in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, an Egyptian birth registration exists, suggesting that he was born in Egypt on 24 August 1929. His father had been living in Egypt, but his mother may have returned to her home to give birth; others suspect that the record has been altered to give Arafat a Palestinian birthplace. He is, in any event, of old Palestinian lineage: The Qudwas (his father's line) are an offshoot of a Gaza branch of the Sunni Muslim al-Husayni (Husseini) family, whereas Arafat's mother came from the more prominent Jerusalem branch of the Husaynis. His father was a merchant trading in Gaza and Egypt; whether or not Arafat was born there, he spent many of his teenage years in Egypt and long had a detectable Egyptian accent. He was the sixth of seven children. In 1942, his father returned to Cairo, and Arafat continued his schooling there. He reportedly became an aide to the military leader of the Palestinian resistance, Abd alQadir al-Husayni, a kinsman on his mother's side. The young Yasir fought with the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza during the Arab - Israel War of 1948. Following the war, the family returned to Gaza. In the 1950s, Arafat studied at Fuʾad I University in Cairo (now Cairo University), majoring in civil engineering. He was reportedly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and also became active as a Palestinian student organizer, heading the Union of Palestinian Students from 1952 to 1957. He then served in the Egyptian army for about a year.

Al-Fatah and the PLO

Arafat and other Palestinian activists were in Prague in 1957 when some of their colleagues were arrested in Egypt, suspected of Muslim Brotherhood activities. Arafat and the two men who were to become his closest aides until their assassinations, Khalil al-Wazir and Salah Khalaf, remained in Europe. Arafat studied engineering further in Stuttgart and then went to Kuwait. While working for the public works department, he started his own contracting firm. This engineering firm prospered, and Arafat reportedly became quite wealthy. Some accounts suggest that his personal wealth helped fund the beginnings of al-Fatah. The nucleus of al-Fatah had already been formed in the late 1950s, by Arafat, al-Wazir, Khalaf, Khalid al-Hasan, and others in Kuwait, who would become lifelong colleagues. Initially, al-Fatah was one of many small Palestinian exile groups advocating armed struggle to free Palestine. Arafat received some training in Algeria, it is believed, and in Syria, where al-Fatah's armed wing, al-Asifa, was formed. He also was imprisoned in Syria for several weeks at this time.

After the 1967 war, al-Fatah's prominence increased greatly. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), originally created under Egyptian auspices in January 1964, was overshadowed by the new guerrilla groups, which increasingly won control of the Palestine National Council (PNC). In 1968 al-Fatah fought off an Israeli attack on a base in Karama, Jordan, and its prestige increased further. In early 1969, al-Fatah and its allies won enough seats in the PNC to elect Arafat the new chairman of the PLO's executive committee. Arafat, now head of both alFatah and the PLO, set up his headquarters in Amman, Jordan. In 1970, the PLO was drawn into conflict with the government of Jordan when one of its member organizations, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), hijacked several aircraft. In the ensuing Black September of 1970, the PLO was driven out of its Jordanian operational base. Arafat, who escaped from Amman, set up his new base in Beirut, while the PLO began operations against Israel from southern Lebanon. After the Arab - Israel War of 1973, some PLO leaders began discussing the possibility of a settlement short of the previously envisioned secular state in all of Palestine. On 14 November 1974, Arafat addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations, claiming that he held both "an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun."

The UN speech marked a high point, but Arafat's career took another turn downward with the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. The PLO found itself fighting not only Maronite forces but eventually the Syrian army, though these alignments shifted as the war went on. The 1977 visit of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem and the 1978 peace between Israel and Egypt were yet further blows, and then in 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon. Having been driven from Jordan more than a decade before and besieged in Lebanon by Syrians and others from time to time, the PLO had nevertheless managed to maintain its base in Lebanon. In June 1982 Israel not only occupied all of Lebanon up to Beirut but also (unsuccessfully) targeted Arafat personally. Arafat and ten thousand Palestinian fighters were evicted from Beirut in August. An attempt to form a new base in Tripoli, Lebanon, failed due to Syrian opposition and an intra-Fath mutiny, and Arafat and the PLO moved to Tunis, far from the zone of Israeli - Palestinian confrontation (although in 1985 Israel did bomb PLO headquarters there in 1985, including Arafat's compound).

In 1984, Arafat entered into negotiations with King Hussein ibn Talal of Jordan to seek a common ground for a joint Jordanian - Palestinian negotiating position - the so-called Jordanian Option. The effort failed, with Jordan blaming Arafat for the failure. In December 1987, the Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, began in the occupied territories. Although Arafat's al-Fatah was a major player in the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada, it was local cadres, not the Tunis leadership, who were in charge of the actual uprising. This led many analysts to once again predict that Arafat's days were numbered and that the central PLO leadership had lost its relevance. As in 1970, 1982, and 1984 - when earlier political obituaries had been written - they were wrong. One of the strengths that had kept Arafat in his position for so long, despite squabbles, plots, and even fighting and assassinations among Palestinian factions, was his ability to forge a grand coalition of very differently oriented factions, left and right, communist and capitalist. Increasingly unable to hold such a broad umbrella group together, Arafat was finally willing to gamble on seizing a moderate, pronegotiation position despite the fact that this meant the more radical factions now considered him a curse.

Peace Negotiations

In 1988, the PLO leadership - now more and more Arafat and the old al-Fatah elite - agreed to recognize Israel's right to exist, the principle of negotiating with Israel on peace in exchange for territorial withdrawal, and a renunciation of terrorism. After some adjustment, the formula finally met the United States's preconditions for a direct dialogue with the PLO, and this dialogue began with the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, Robert Pelletreau. It was subsequently suspended in June 1990 when Arafat failed to condemn an attack on Israeli territory by a PLO faction. When the Madrid Conference was held in October 1991 with U.S. president George H. W. Bush, the U.S.-PLO talks had been suspended and Israel's Likud government under Yitzhak Shamir adamantly refused to deal with the PLO, which was still seen as a terrorist organization. Therefore, the Palestinians were awkwardly represented in Madrid by a panel of moderate Palestinians, all of whom were acceptable to the PLO but none of whom had been formally members of it. As long as Likud was in power, they were also technically half of a "joint Jordanian - Palestinian delegation." Once again, despite the insistence by the delegation that they were in coordination with the PLO leadership in Tunis, many analysts declared that Arafat and the PLO were no longer relevant to the search for a Palestinian - Israeli solution. Meanwhile, in 1992, as Arafat was flying to Sudan in a private aircraft, his plane crashed in the Libyan desert, killing the pilots and several passengers. Arafat survived, but he was badly injured and required surgery to correct further problems. His friends later indicated that his survival, when so many others had died, convinced him that he had been providentially spared for some reason. The lifelong bachelor also married, further putting his guerrilla days behind him. These factors may have helped prepare him for the decision that he soon would have to make.

As long as Likud was in power, no breakthrough was possible, and the Palestinian side of the peace talks went nowhere. But Shamir was replaced by Yitzhak Rabin and the Labor Party in 1992. Frustrated with the difficulties of negotiating with a Palestinian delegation that had little real authority to offer compromise, a secret back-channel negotiation began via Norwegian intermediaries. Ultimately, the result was the Oslo Accord, signed on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993. For the first time, Arafat - once denounced as a terrorist by U.S. presidents and forbidden entrance into the United States after his 1974 UN speech - came to the White House to be greeted by a U.S. president. Even more dramatically, at the signing of the agreement he offered his hand to Yitzhak Rabin, and Rabin accepted it, albeit with apparent reluctance. That dramatic handshake on the White House lawn underscored the fact that Arafat had survived his enemies within the PLO as well as in Israel and the United States. Arafat became the provisional head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which took over self-government in Jericho and Gaza in the summer of 1994 and, eventually, more of the West Bank as well. Arafat's entry into Jericho in June 1994 marked a personal vindication for Arafat, at least in his own view.

Palestinian Authority

Arafat formally was elected president of the Palestinian Authority during elections in January 1996. He oversaw the growth of a PA bureaucracy and a number of security and intelligence agencies. His leadership came under mounting criticism by Palestinians both inside and outside the PA. The most intractable were the Islamist movements HAMAS and Islamic Jihad, both of which vowed to continue attacks against Israel. These groups had the support of the Palestinian community, and Arafat had to balance the support extended by the Palestinian street with his needs both to placate his Israeli and U.S. peace partners and to maintain his tight grip on power in the PA. The failure of the peace process led to the violence of the al-Aqsa Intifada in October 2000, which in turn led to Israel's reoccupation of large parts of the PA, the destruction of its infrastructure, and the lengthy siege of Arafat's compound in Ramallah that began in 2002 and continued into 2004. Despite the efforts of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to ignore and isolate him, and similar efforts by U.S. president George W. Bush, Arafat has remained head of al-Fatah, the PLO, the PA, and the Palestinian national movement generally, and no one of even remotely the same stature or power has emerged to take his place.

Arafat had never married during his long guerrilla years. In 1991 or early 1992, however, he married Suha Tawil (1963 - ), the daughter of a PLO activist father and a lawyer mother who often represented accused Palestinians in the territories. Tawil had served as Arafat's secretary. A Christian who reportedly converted to Islam, she is more than thirty years his junior. She has given a number of interviews to the Arab and Western press (and even to the Israeli press), providing for the first time an intimate view of Arafat. A daughter, Zahwa, was born to the couple in 1994. Arafat himself is a practicing Sunni Muslim and is believed to practice his faith. After the 1992 plane crash, his religious convictions were reportedly strengthened. In his younger days he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but in middle age he stands staunchly against the Islamist elements in the Palestinian movement. His health has deteriorated noticeably in recent years, but he remains a survivor in a region that recently has witnessed the passing of several long-standing Arab rulers.

Bibliography

Aburish, Said K. Arafat: From Defender to Dictator. New York: Bloomsbury, 1998.

Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People,Power, and Politics. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Gowers, Andrew, and Walker, Tony. Behind the Myth: YasserArafat and the Palestinian Revolution. London: W. H. Allen, 1990.

Hart, Alan. Arafat: A Political Biography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.

Iyad, Abou, with Rouleau, Eric. My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle. New York: Times Books, 1981.

Kiernan, Thomas. Arafat: The Man and the Myth. New York: Norton, 1976.

Wallach, Janet, and Wallach, John. Arafat: In the Eyes of theBeholder. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990.

— MICHAEL DUNN UPDATED BY MICHAEL R. FISCHBACH

The head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since 1968 and of the Palestinian Authority since 1994. He supported Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War but is generally recognized as a moderate within the Palestinian leadership. He shared the Nobel Prize for peace in 1994. (See Oslo Accord.)