Yasser Arafat
(1929-2004)
Yasser Arafat played a leading role in the Palestinian independence movement from its inception. The name (Yasser) is not his real name; Rather, he was called it since his early childhood; He has a noble face - as his older sister says - but his real name is (Muhammad Abdel Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa), according to one of his companions in the Fatah movement. The Encyclopedia Britannica calls him Abdul Rahman Raouf the role model. Abu Ammar is his nom de guerre, which he gave to himself in honor of the companion Ammar bin Yasser.
Yasser Arafat lived devoted to the Palestinian cause. Averse to many of life's pleasures. When his sister asked him: “Why didn’t you get married?” he answered her: “Do you want me to be accused of polygamy? Isn’t my first woman, the Palestinian revolution, enough?”
Yasser Arafat was born in the city of Jerusalem, on August 5, 1929, to a merchant father, whose name was Abdul Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa. His mother is Zahwa Abu Al-Saud, from the Jerusalem area. She is related to the late Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Arafat spent his childhood, steps away from the Buraq Wall, where he followed the bloody uprisings during the British Mandate. He lived among the Al-Husseini family, to which his mother belonged.
The martyr Yasser Arafat is one of seven brothers and sisters. His father moved to Cairo; But no one knows the reasons for his move, although there are those who believe that the British banished him to it. There are those who say that he left for commercial reasons. Whatever the reasons for his move to Cairo, he continued his work in the wholesale food trade, and opened a factory for cheeses that were sold in the Arab world.
It is difficult to say that the Yasser Arafat lived an adolescence, like all of his peers and colleagues. Since childhood, his interests have been focused on things beyond his age, and different from those that young people usually care about in their teenage years. He was fond of politics and military affairs. He was occupied with the colonial occupation of the Arab world. As a teenager Arafat was involved in smuggling weapons to Palestine to aid the fight against the British and the Israelis.
In 1952, the martyr Yasser Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Students Union by an overwhelming majority. He held this position until he completed his university studies in 1956. Some say: “The martyr Yasser Arafat, in the early fifties, did not join any political party, but he knew at least what was harmful to the Palestinian cause.” Although he left his studies at the University of Faud to fight with the Arabs at age nineteen, he returned and completed an engineering degree in 1956.
For the next several years, Arafat lived in Kuwait employed in the department of public works. During this period, he realized the failure of the Arab governments, the weakness and dispersion of the Arab countries, the absence of an organization that truly and effectively embodies Palestinian legitimacy, and the importance of contacting various Palestinian leaders in their locations, within the student activities of Palestinian youth. The first Palestinian nucleus was formed in 1954 in Gaza to fight the Israeli enemy.
In 1958, he and several others formed al-Fatah, which would become the primary power base within the Palestinian leadership. This later expanded to become the first central committee on Kuwaiti soil, as he paid for it from his private company,as he possessed enormous wealth, which he spent on his movements and the movements of his companions. Through al-Fatah, Arafat and others published a magazine advocating arms smuggling to oppose Israel. Arafat left Kuwait in 1964 and moved to Jordan, where he began organizing raids into Israel and advocating other revolutionary actions. Yasser Arafat was the one who shot the first bullet in the Palestinian revolution, on New Year’s Eve of 1965. He was not more than 35 years old. After the success of the operation, he himself began distributing the data to newspapers in Beirut, where the name “Fatah” and the name Abu Ammar appeared for the first time. Arafat was known at the time by his fighting name: “Raouf.”
Around this time Arafat also worked, in conjunction with Arab states and the Arab league to form the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). When the Arab nations were defeated in the 1967 Six-Day War Al-Fatah was left as the strongest organization in the PLO. This eventually led to Araft becoming chairman of the PLO Executive Committee. Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, announced at the beginning of 1968 that he supported guerrilla action and provided it with all its material and moral capabilities. This was followed by the appointment of the martyr Yasser Arafat, on April 15, 1968, as the official spokesman for the “Fatah Movement” and, by extension, as “The Storm”.
Although initially conciliatory towards the Israelis, the PLO took on a different tone when Arafat and al-Fatah became the leading member organization in 1969. In 1970 King Hussein of Jordan forcefully expelled the PLO from his country after increased guerilla violence. The PLO had been using fortified bases in Jordan to launch strikes into Israel. The Jordanian Army drove out the PLO in a war that came to be known as Black September.
From Jordan the PLO took up residence in Beirut, Lebanon. Here they joined Muslim soldiers fighting against Christians in that country's civil war. Just as in Jordan, Arafat built a series of bases in Lebanon and estabalished his own mini-state. By some accounts he had more power and territory than the Lebanese government.
In 1974 Arafat made a landmark appearance before the U.N. General Assembly. He described himself as bearing an "olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun" and cautioned the assembly, "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." His appearance brought about PLO diplomatic recognition on a global scale.
Arafat again came under fire in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon in response to repeated PLO attacks. Israeli forces fought all the way to Beirut and put Arafat under seige for months. Eventually Arafat was able to negotiate an evacuation. PLO forces fled the country under UN flagged ships and by land. After his exit from Lebanon, Afafat moved to Tunis where he continued operations of his now weakened and fragmented PLO for the next 12 years.
In 1987, the first intifada erupted in Israel and in the following year, Arafat gave a speech to the United Nations renouncing terrorism, recognizing the existence of Israel, and declaring his willingness to work for a peaceful settlement to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. This hurt Arafat's credibility in the eyes of many of his most ardent followers and cost him the support of many Arab governments.
Arafat made a second unpopular political move when he supported Iraq during the Gulf War of 1991. His allegiance was born out of the belief that Saddam Hussein was the only Arab leader that would stand up to Israel. On the day of the deadline given by the Coalition for Iraqi withdrawl from Kuwait Arafat flew from Baghdad back to Gaza. As military operations began Arafat remained steadfast in his support. His people shared this view, Palestinians celebrated as Iraq began launching Scud missiles at Israel. He would pay for this support however. Arab nations involved in the coalition discontinued financial support of the PLO and expelled thousands of Palestinians living in their territories. As the Gulf War ended Arafat appeared on the verge of marginalization.
Despite this Arafat was able to bounce back and begin negotiations with Israel. In September 1993, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, and in May 1994, they both signed the Cairo agreement. For their efforts, both Arafat and Rabin, as well as Shimon Peres received the Nobel piece prize. That same year, Arafat made a triumphant return to the Gaza Strip. As he walked across the Egyptian border he was greeted by enthusiastic crowds celebrating his arrival.
Following the terms of the peace agreements, the Palestinian Authority held a Presidential election in 1996, which Arafat won with over 80 percent of the vote. The fact that many opposition leaders did not run in this race caused some to question the legitimacy of the election however. The years following Arafat's election were characterized by continuing instability in the region and increasing frustration with Arafat's dictatorial style of leadership. In July of 2000 Arafat returned to the United States for more negotiations, this time with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The talks collapsed and in September of that year a second Palestinian intifadah began.
By 2002, both the US and Israel were putting pressure on the Palestinian National Authority to find a new leader, but Arafat remained unwilling to relinquish his hold on power. After the reoccupation of the West Bank in the year 2002 and the virtual destruction of Palestinian Authority institutions, there was a lot of violence and disorder. Arafat's powers shrank. The Israeli army put him under house arrest in his office in Ramallah. As anarchy reigned around him Arafat remained defiant, stating at one point in 2003, "No one can kick me out."
In October 2004, Arafat began experiencing health problems and reportedly lost consciousness on October 27. Surrounded by Israeli forces, Arafat had been unable to leave his Ramallah compound for two years until the Israeli government allowed Arafat to be flown to France for medical treatment. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has hinted at the possibility of assasinating Arafat over the last year, but the Israeli government agreed to allow Arafat back into the country following his medical treatment. Yasser Arafat died at 3:30 a.m. Paris time, on November 11, 2004 at the age of 75. He died at the French Percy military hospital to which he had been transported on October 29, 2004, for medical treatment.
Yasar Arafat will likely be best remembered for two things. He lead Palestinians towards the acceptance of Israel and he kindled the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and a future Palestinian state. However he was a flawed leader in many respects. He made some very, very serious blunders. But he was not the reason behind the conflict. The reason for the continued conflict was the continued occupation. Arafat was unable to lead the Palestinians in the midst of this conflict. He showed little vision or imagination. And the Palestinians were quite upset with Arafat's rule. However, the breakdown of the peace process was not Arafat's fault alone. He contributed to it. The Israelis contributed to it. Indeed, the Americans contributed to it, too. His departure from the scene gave an opportunity for a renewed political process.
Before his death, he was in solitary confinement at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah for about 3 years. On 12 October 2004, about 4 h after a meal, he developed severe nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and then watery diarrhea. On 29 October 2004, the patient was transferred to the French Percy Military Hospital in Clamart, where he was diagnosed with enteritis. Urine tests were negative for gamma-emitting radionuclides. On 11 November 2004, Arafat died of intussusception following a cerebral hemorrhage. An autopsy was not performed. It was only after the murder of Litvinenko (2006) that it was suggested that the cause of Yassir Arafat’s death could have been polonium-210. As the biological samples collected during the patient’s hospitalization were destroyed in 2008.
An exhumation was performed on 27 November 2012 and various tests carried out on them by Russian, French and Swiss scientists. A Swiss lab said that polonium poisoning was possible, but French scientists disagreed. It was found that the hypothesis of Arafat polonium-210 poisoning cannot be fully rejected. The studies revealed: presence of megakaryocytes and an increased number of macrophages, enteritis, severe disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) with marked thrombocytopenia, cholestatic jaundice and renal failure.
A 108-page report by Swiss scientists at the University of Lausanne, obtained by Al-Jazeera and shown to other media outlets, found unnaturally high levels of polonium in Arafat’s ribs and pelvis, and in soil stained by his decaying organs. French officials ordered an investigation in 2012 after the lethal radioactive element polonium was discovered on Arafat's clothing, which had been supplied by his widow. Forensic tests on samples taken from the exhumed corpse of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat showed unexpectedly high levels of radioactive polonium, according to his widow and media reports in Novembe 2013. There had been speculation in the Arab world that Israel poisoned him, but Israel denied the allegations. Arafat's widow, Suha, told Reuters that "a real crime" had been revealed. She said his death in 2004 was "a political assassination."
Scientific tests showed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died of natural causes and not radioactive poisoning, and there is no need to examine his remains again, a Russian expert said 26 December 2013. “The tests were comprehensive and there’s no need for re-examination. This person died of natural causes, not because of radioactive poisoning,” the head of Russia’s Federal Biomedical Agency, Vladimir Uiba, told reporters. The head of a Russian forensics bureau said in November 2013 in a report quoted by Al Jazeera that it had found no conclusive sign of polonium in Arafat’s body, but other scientists quoted by the channel doubted the Russian bureau's methodology.
A spokesman for the Israeli Interior Ministry, Yigal Palmor, expressed hope that the findings by Russian and French experts would “end these groundless accusations and mad conspiracy theories similar to the polonium saga.”
The struggle of the Yasser Arafat for Palestine was crowned by the peace process and the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority on Palestinian land, with its reference being the Palestine Liberation Organization. He said: “When we search for peace and call for it, this is not new to us as a Palestinian revolution and as a Palestinian people. We do not fight for the sake of fighting, and we are not mercenaries, nor seekers of wars. But we took up arms to confront the injustice, persecution, and occupation that faced our people, and the aggression that occurred.” On our land and our sanctities. The whole world knows this, and most of them were witnesses to the Palestinian tragedy.”
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