Yasir Arafat

I

Introduction

Yasir Arafat (1929-2004), also known as Abu Ammar, Palestinian political and military leader who led the Palestinian people in their efforts for statehood, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; 1969-2004), and president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA; 1996-2004).

II

Early Life

Muhammad Abdul Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini was the son of a textile merchant who was raised in Cairo and Jerusalem. He left Jerusalem after the establishment of Israel in 1948, fighting with the Palestinian forces of the grand mufti of Jerusalem. He graduated from the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University in 1956, where he became involved in politics, chairing the Palestinian Students’ Union, and also trained as a fedayeen (commando). In 1956 he served with the Egyptian army during the Suez Crisis. He resettled in Kuwait where in 1957 he founded the commando group Al Fatah, followed by the Al Fatah faction of the PLO in 1959. For the next few years, while working with a construction firm in Kuwait, he repeatedly led fedayeen raids mostly launched from Jordan deep into Israeli territory. In 1964 he linked Al Fatah with similar groups in the PLO, becoming chairman of the organization in 1968 and changing its focus from pan-Arabism to Palestinian national aspirations. In 1969 Arafat was made chairman of the PLO’s Executive Committee as well as commander-in-chief, thereby becoming the recognized leader of the Palestinian nationalist movement.

Jordan was a useful base for PLO operations as it was home to a large number of Palestinians. The Jordanian government, headed by King Hussein, tolerated the PLO’s raids into Israel until Arafat began to threaten the government’s authority. In 1970 Hussein cracked down on the PLO and Arafat was forced to flee. About 10,000 Palestinians were killed in fighting between the PLO and the Jordanian army.

III

Rise to Prominence

For several years the Arab world could not reach a consensus about whether to support Arafat. After the Arab League recognized the PLO as the sole representative of Palestinian Arabs in 1974, Arafat worked to win the organization international recognition, becoming in November of that year the first representative of a non-governmental body (the PLO) to address a plenary session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. In an infamous gesture, Arafat spoke to the assembly with a pistol strapped to his hip.

Several years of PLO assassinations, hijackings, and bombings followed, gaining the PLO and Arafat international prominence. For most of the 1970s, Arafat was based in Beirut, Lebanon, from where his guerrillas attacked Israel. He also oversaw an enormous bureaucracy that provided social welfare services to Palestinian refugees. The PLO also became involved in the Lebanese Civil War. In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to stop the PLO’s attacks. Arafat was forced to flee again, this time to Tunis, Tunisia. Following this defeat his power was deeply diminished, and many observers believed his leadership was in danger—he survived an Israeli bombing raid in 1985. Arafat, however, remained in power and the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987 strengthened his position by focusing world attention on the plight of the Palestinians once more. He also made a strong effort to shed his terrorist image for that of the moderate statesman. In 1988, after King Hussein relinquished Jordanian claims to the West Bank, Arafat proclaimed an independent Palestinian state. He also recognized Israel’s right to exist. These developments enabled the United States to open direct dialogue with the PLO.

IV

Peacemaker

Arafat’s support for Iraq during the Gulf War eroded his international standing, especially with most Arab governments in the region. Following secret negotiations in Oslo, Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to the signing of a peace accord in Washington, D.C., on September 13, 1993, calling for Israel and the PLO to recognize each other and for Palestinian self-rule to begin in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. Israeli forces finally withdrew from these areas in May 1994, and Arafat was received by an immense crowd in July when he returned as interim chairman of the PNA. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1994 for replacing “war and hate” with “peace and cooperation” in the Middle East. He visited Israel for the first time in November 1995, to offer his condolences to Yitzhak Rabin’s widow after the Israeli prime minister’s assassination by a Jewish student. In January 1996 Arafat was elected as executive head of the new Palestinian National Council, with over 88 per cent of the poll in autonomous Palestine. In April 1996 Arafat secured PLO approval for the removal from the Palestinian National Covenant of clauses calling for the destruction of Israel.

Terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas and other radical groups, and internal feuding exacerbated by violence between Palestinian police and civilians, continued to disturb his government. Arafat faced an increasingly hard Israeli line in negotiations after the election of Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister in May 1996. The release of Hebron to Palestinian control in January 1997 reinforced local support for Arafat, but incidents such as the building of new Israeli settlements placed further strain on the peace agreement. Strong American pressure brought about the interim Wye Accord in October 1998, and, in November, Palestinians took back control of additional areas of the West Bank and gained the right to open an airport. In December 1998, Arafat welcomed Bill Clinton on an official visit to Gaza, in an elaborate ceremony at the newly inaugurated Gaza International Airport.

The election of Ehud Barak in May 1999 appeared to herald new hope for the peace process. He and Arafat completed implementation talks on the Wye Accord, with the Sharm el-Sheikh Accord in September, and the transfer of 7 per cent of the West Bank to Palestinian control allowed the commencement of final status talks. However, these stalled in February 2000 and a two-week summit at Camp David in July failed to reconcile the competing claims, specifically over the status of Jerusalem and the right of return for the Palestinian diaspora. In an increasingly tense atmosphere the provocative visit of Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the al-Aqsa mosque in September sparked a second intifada. To a background of spiralling violence, Arafat and Barak again met at Sharm el-Sheik in October but the agreement rapidly unravelled. The Israeli election of February 2001 saw the victory of Sharon and the escalation of violence by both sides.