Yasir Arafat
Mohamed Yasir Abdel Rahman Abdel Rauf Arafat al Qudwa al Huseini (in Arabic, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحيس) (Cairo, Egypt, August 24, 1929-Clamart, France, November 11, 2004), better known as Yasir Arafat (ياسر عرفات) or by his kunya Abu Ammar (أبو عمار), was a Palestinian nationalist leader, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, chairman of the Palestinian National Authority, and leader of the secular political party Fatah, which he founded in 1959. Arafat spent much part of his life fighting against Israel in the name of Palestinian self-determination. Although he had opposed Israel's existence, in 1988 he changed his position and accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 242.
In 1994, he received the Nobel Peace Prize together with Shimon Peres and Isaac Rabin, for their efforts in favor of peace in the Middle East, and in Spain, together with Isaac Rabin, the Prince of Asturias Award for Cooperation international on September 3 of the same year.
Poses
Arafat and his movement operated from various Arab countries. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fatah engaged Jordan in a brief civil war. Forced to flee Jordan for Lebanon, Arafat and Fatah were major targets in Israel's invasions in 1978 and 1982. While most Palestinians, regardless of their political persuasion, viewed him as a guerrilla and A martyr who symbolized their national aspirations, many Israelis described him as a terrorist because of the attacks his faction carried out against civilians.
Arafat entered into negotiations with the Israeli government to end the decades-long conflict between Israel and the PLO. These included the Madrid Peace Conference, the Oslo Accords, and the 2000 Camp David Summit. His political rivals, including Islamists and various leftists in the PLO, often criticized him for being corrupt or too compliant in his concessions. to the Israeli government.[<citation needed] In 1994, Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Isaac Rabin and Shimon Peres, for the Oslo negotiations. During this time, Hamas and other military organizations seized power and shook the foundations of the Fatah authority that Arafat had established in the Palestinian Territories.
In late 2004, after being confined to his Ramallah compound by the Israeli army for more than two years, Arafat fell ill and slipped into a coma. The doctors spoke of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and cirrhosis, but no autopsy was done. He died on November 11, 2004 at the age of 75.
Early Years
Birth and infancy
Yasir Arafat was born in Cairo to Palestinian parents. His father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Huseini, was from Gaza; and his paternal grandmother was Egyptian. Arafat's father was a textile merchant in El-Sakakini, a religiously mixed district of Cairo.
Arafat was the second youngest of seven children and, along with his little brother Fathi, the only one born in Cairo. His mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, came from a Jerusalem family. She died of kidney disease in 1933 when Arafat was four years old.
Arafat's first visit to Jerusalem came when his father, unable to raise seven children on his own, sent him and his brother Fathi along with their mother's family to the Moroccan Quarter of the Old City. They lived there for four years with their uncle Salim Abul Saud. In 1937, his father claimed them to be in the care of his older sister, Inam. Arafat's relationship with his father was deteriorating; when he died in 1952, Arafat did not attend his funeral. He also did not visit his father's grave after his return to Gaza.
Education and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
In 1944, Arafat enrolled in King Fuad I University, graduating in 1950. He later claimed to have found a better understanding of Judaism and Zionism by engaging in discussions with Jews and reading publications by Theodor Herzl and other Zionists At the same time, he became an Arab nationalist and began smuggling weapons into the former British Mandatory Palestine, destined for Arab Higher Committee irregulars and Holy War Army militias. During the Arab-Arab War Israeli army of 1948, Arafat dropped out of university and along with other Arabs set out to enter Palestine to join the Arab forces fighting Israeli troops. However, rather than join the ranks of the Palestinian fedayeen, Arafat fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood, although he did not join the organization. He took part in the fighting in the Gaza area, which was the main battlefield for the Egyptian forces during the conflict. By early 1949 the war was turning in favor of Israel and Arafat returned to Cairo due to lack of logistical support.
After returning to university, Arafat studied civil engineering and served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students (UGEP) from 1952 to 1956. During his first year as president of the union, the university changed its name to University in Cairo, after the Free Officers Movement staged a coup, dethroning King Farouq I. By then, Arafat had already earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and was called up to fight with Egyptian forces during the Sinai war; however, he never actually fought on that battlefield. Later that year, at a conference in Prague, he wore a plain white keffiyeh, different from the checkered pattern he later adopted in Kuwait, which would become on its emblem.
Name
Arafat's original name was Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini. His first name was Mohammed Abdel Rahman; Abdel Raouf was the name of his father and Arafat was his grandfather's. His tribal name was Al-Qudwa, who belonged to the al-Husseini clan. It should be noted that Arafat's clan, al-Husseini, was located in Gaza and should not be confused with the well-known al-Husayni clan from Jerusalem.
Although Arafat grew up in Cairo, it was a common tradition to remove Mohammed or Ahmad from the first name; famous Egyptians like Anwar el-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak did it too. However, Arafat also removed the parts of Abdel Rahman and Abdel Raouf. In the early 1950s, Arafat adopted the name Yasir and, during his early years in the guerilla, he adopted the nom de guerre of Abu Ammar. Both names are associated with Ammar ibn Yasir, one of Muhammad's early companions. Although he shed most of the names inherited from him, he kept Arafat because of his significance in Islam.
Origin of Fatah
Fatah Foundation
Following the 1956 Suez Crisis, 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 the Gaza Strip. Gaza, causing the expulsion of all the guerrilla forces or "fedayeen" who was there, including Arafat. Arafat initially strove to obtain a visa for Canada and later for Saudi Arabia, but was unsuccessful in either case. In 1957 he applied for a visa for Kuwait (at the time a British protectorate), which was granted. based on his work in civil engineering. There he met 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 during his time at Cairo University and Abu Jihad in Gaza. Both would become Arafat's right-hand men during his later political life. Abu Iyad traveled with Arafat to Kuwait in the late 1960s; Abu Jihad, also working as a teacher, had been living there since 1959. After settling in Kuwait, Abu Iyad helped Arafat get a temporary job as a school teacher.
While Arafat befriended other Palestinian refugees (some of whom he met during his Cairo days), he and others gradually founded a group that became known as Fatah. The exact date of Fatah's birth is unknown. However, in 1959, the existence of the group was attested in the pages of a Palestinian nationalist magazine, Filastununa Nida al-Hayat (Our Palestine, The Call of Life), written and edited by Abu Jihad.. FaTaH is a reverse acronym of the Arabic name Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini , which translates as "The Palestinian National Liberation Movement". Fatah is also a word used in early Islamic times to refer to "conquest".
Fatah dedicated itself to the task of liberating Palestine through armed struggle by the Palestinians themselves. This differed from other political and guerrilla organizations in Palestine, most of which strongly believed in a united Arab response. Arafat's organization never espoused the ideologies of the major Arab national governments of the time, in contrast to other factions. Palestinians, which often became satellites of nations such as Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and others.
In keeping with his ideology, Arafat generally refused 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 unanimous support by avoiding alliances with groups loyal to other ideologies. However, he worked hard in Kuwait to lay the groundwork for future financial support for Fatah by enlisting contributions from the many wealthy Palestinians who worked there and in other Gulf countries, such as Qatar (where he met Mahmud Abbas in 1961). These men of oil businesses and 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 associates emigrated to Syria — a country that borders Israel — which had recently broken away from the short-lived union with Nasser's Egypt. At the time, Fatah had approximately 300 members, but none of them were combatants. However, in Syria it managed to recruit higher-income members to embark on its armed struggle against Israel. Fatah's forces increased further after Arafat decided to offer much higher salaries to members of the Palestine Liberation Army, the regular military force of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was created by the Arab League in the summer of 1964. On December 31 of that same year, a platoon from Al-Asifah, the armed wing of Fatah at the time, tried to infiltrate Israel, but were intercepted and detained by Lebanese security forces. This incident was followed by several more raids by poorly trained and equipped Fatah guerrillas. Some succeeded, while others failed. Often Arafat personally led these raids.
Arafat and his top aide, Abu Jihad, were detained in Syria over the assassination of a pro-Syrian Palestinian leader, Yusuf Orabi. Hours before his assassination, Arafat was discussing with him ways to unify his factions and to solicit Orabi's support against Arafat's 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-Asad (Assad and Orabi were "close friends") suspected Arafat. was involved in the incident. Assad organized a jury, which found Arafat and Abu Jihad guilty of murder. However, both were pardoned by Syrian President Salah Jadid. However, the incident deteriorated relations between Assad and Arafat, something that would come to light later when Assad became president of Syria.
Leader of the Palestinians
On November 13, 1966, Israel launched a major attack on the Jordanian-administered West Bank town of as-Samu in response to a Fatah roadside bomb attack that had killed three members of the Israeli security forces, near the southern sector of the Green Line. In the skirmish that ensued as a result of the Israeli attack, dozens of members of the Jordanian security forces were killed and 125 houses were leveled. This raid was one of the factors leading to the 1967 Six Day War.
The Six-Day War began when Israel launched a pre-emptive air strike against the Egyptian air force on June 5, 1967. The war ended with an Arab defeat and Israel's occupation of several Arab territories, including West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Although Nasser and his Arab allies were defeated, Arafat and Fatah were able to score a victory, as most Palestinians, who until then tended to align with and sympathize with particular Arab governments, now began to accept the indispensability of a "Palestinian" solution to their dilemma. Many mainly Palestinian political parties, including George Habash's Arab Nationalist Movement, Amin al-Husayni's Arab Higher Committee, the Islamic Liberation Front, and various Syrian-backed groups, which in practice collapsed with the defeat of the governments that financed them. Barely a week after the defeat, Arafat crossed the Jordan River in disguise and entered the West Bank, set up recruiting centers in Hebron, the Jerusalem area and Nablus, and began attracting fighters and patrons to his cause.
At the same time, Nasser contacted Arafat through Mohammed Heikal (one of Nasser's advisers), after which Nasser declared that Arafat was the "leader of the Palestinians". In December, Ahmed Shukeiri resigned from his position as Chairman of the PLO. Yahya Hammuda took his place and invited Arafat to join the organization. Fatah was granted 33 of the 105 seats on the PLO Executive Committee, while 57 seats were left for other guerrilla factions.
Battle of Karamé
Throughout 1968, Fatah and other Palestinian armed groups were the targets of a major Israeli military operation in the Jordanian village of Karamé, where Fatah's headquarters were located, as well as a medium-sized Palestinian refugee camp. The town's name is the Arabic word for "dignity," which heightened its symbolic power in Arab eyes, especially after the 1967 Arab defeat. The operation was met with heavy attacks inside the West Bank, including rocket fire by Fatah and other Palestinian militias. According to Said Aburish, the Jordanian government and a number of Fatah commandos informed Arafat that a large-scale Israeli attack on the town was being prepared, urging fedayeen groups such as the recently formed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh's splinter organization, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to withdraw their forces from the town. Although a pro-Fatah Jordanian major-general advised him to withdraw his men and headquarters to the nearby hills, Arafat refused, stating: "We want to convince the world that there are those in the Arab world who do not surrender or run away. » Aburish writes that it was on Arafat's orders that Fatah stayed put, and that the Jordanian Army agreed to back them if heavy fighting ensued.
On the night of March 21, the Israel Defense Forces attacked Karamé with heavy weapons, armored vehicles and fighter jets. Fatah held its position, to the surprise of the Israeli army. As Israeli forces intensified the attack the Jordanian Army came into play, causing the Israelis to withdraw to avoid a full-scale war. By the end of the battle, about 150 Fatah militants, twenty Jordanian soldiers, and twenty-eight Israeli soldiers were killed. Despite the large number of Arab fatalities, Fatah was considered victorious by the rapid withdrawal of the Israeli army.Arafat himself was on the battlefield, but details of his involvement are unclear. However, his allies (as well as Israeli intelligence) confirmed that during the battle he was encouraging his men to hold their positions and continue fighting.
The battle was covered in great detail by Time magazine, and Arafat's face appeared on the cover of December 13, 1968, bringing his image to the world for the first time. After the war, the reputation of Arafat and Fatah received a boost, and Arafat was considered a national hero who dared to stand up to Israel. In addition to massive praise from the Arab world, financial donations increased significantly and upgraded Fatah's weaponry and equipment. Many young Arabs, including thousands of non-Palestinians, began to join Fatah's ranks.
At the Palestinian National Council in Cairo on February 3, 1969, Yahya Hammuda resigned as the PLO chairman and Arafat took his place. Two years later he became the commander in chief of the Palestinian Revolutionary Forces, and in 1973 he became the leader of the political wing of the PLO.
Jordan
In the late 1960s, tensions between the Palestinians and the Jordanian government increased significantly; Heavily armed Arab resistance elements had created a virtual "state within a state" in Jordan, controlling various strategic positions in the country. Following their victory at the Battle of Karamé, Fatah and other Palestinian militias began to take control of Jordanian civilian life. They set up police checkpoints, publicly humiliated Jordanian police forces, harassed women, and collected illegal taxes; all of which Arafat consented to or was unaware of.King Hussein saw this as a growing threat to the sovereignty and security of his kingdom and tried to disarm the militias. However, to avoid a military confrontation with opposition forces, Hussein fired several of his anti-PLO ministers, including some members of his own family, and invited Arafat to become Jordan's prime minister. Arafat rejected it, citing his belief in the need for a Palestinian state with Palestinian leadership.
Despite Hussein's intervention, militant actions continued in Jordan. On September 15, 1970, the PFLP hijacked five planes and landed three of them at Dawson's Field, located 30 miles east of Amman. When the passengers were transferred to another location, they blew up three of the planes. This damaged Arafat's image in many Western countries, including the United States, which held him responsible for controlling the Palestinian factions that belonged to the PLO. Arafat, bowing to pressure from Arab governments, publicly condemned the kidnappings and placed the PFLP on hold from any guerrilla action for a few weeks. (He had acted the same when the PFLP attacked Athens Airport). The Jordanian government moved to regain control over its territory, and the next day King Hussein declared martial law. That same day Arafat became the supreme commander of the PLA.
After the conflict escalated, other Arab governments tried to negotiate a peaceful solution. Gamal Abdel Nasser was part of this effort by organizing the first emergency summit of the Arab League in Cairo on September 21. Arafat's speech drew the sympathy of the attending Arab leaders. Other heads of state rallied against Hussein, including Muammar Gaddafi, who mocked him and his schizophrenic father, King Talal. Therefore, the attempt to establish a peace agreement between the two sides failed. Nasser died of a heart attack hours after the summit.
By September 25, the Jordanian army had gained control, and two days later, Arafat and Hussein agreed to a ceasefire in Amman. The Jordanian army inflicted heavy casualties on Palestinians—including civilians—who suffered approximately 3,500 deaths. After repeated ceasefire violations by both the PLO and the Jordanian army, Arafat called for the overthrow of King Hussein. In response to this threat, in June 1971, Hussein ordered his army to expel all remaining Palestinian guerrillas from northern Jordan, which they succeeded in doing. Arafat and several of his men, including two high-ranking commanders, Abu Iyad and Abu Jihad, were cornered in the northernmost corner of Jordan. They took up positions near the town of Gerasa, 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 get into Syria with about two thousand of his men. However, due to the hostility between Arafat and Syrian President Hafez al-Asad (who had ousted President Salah Jadid), the Palestinian fighters crossed the border into Lebanon to join the PLO forces of that country, where they established its new headquarters.
Palestinian movements
Since the end of World War II, he participated in the incipient Palestinian movement, which aspired to build an independent Arab state in what was then the British Mandate, which clashed with Jewish aspirations over the same territory.
Arafat joined the League of Palestinian Students in 1944, of which he was president from 1952 to 1956. In 1957 or 1959 (sources differ on this matter[citation needed]) participated in Kuwait in the founding of the Fatah organization, which reunited in 1964 with other movements and political parties created the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine. On February 3, 1969, he came to preside over both formations, since then symbolizing the Palestinian aspirations to recover their lost homeland at the cost of the territorial invasion of Israel and in the face of the ambitions of their Arab neighbors.
During the 1972 Munich Olympics, the group known as Black September kidnapped and murdered eleven Israeli athletes, in what became known as the Munich massacre. According to various sources, Arafat was informed about the kidnapping plans in Munich. Other authors who support this information are Mohammed Oudeh (Abu Daoud), one of the masterminds of the Munich massacre, and Benny Morris, an important Israeli historian.
As the movement's top leader, he was rejected in many Western countries for his links to Arab terrorism; but he also had moments of acceptance, such as his famous speech before the United Nations by virtue of the recognition of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people (1974), or his admission as a member of the Arab League (1976).
In 1981 he was received in Madrid by the President of the Government of Spain, Adolfo Suárez, with honors as Head of State. It was the first time that Arafat was treated in this way in a European nation.
Tunisia
The Israeli attack on Lebanon between 1982 and 1985 deprived the PLO of the bases from which it had carried out its armed actions against Israel and forced Arafat to take refuge with his organization in Tunisia, although this did not prevent Israeli aircraft from bombing its headquarters in this country in 1985. The leading role of the Arab struggle then shifted to the interior, to the populations of the occupied territories, which since 1988 created a climate of permanent rebellion against the Israeli authorities (the Intifada).
Arafat tried to capitalize on that movement by symbolically proclaiming on November 15, 1988 the creation of the State of Palestine (whose government in exile he himself presided over), which was recognized by more than sixty countries. But the successive military defeats of the Arabs ended up convincing him, following the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the Gulf War in the early nineties, of the need to reach an understanding with Israel.
Peace with Israel
The drive by the United States to open a peace process in the Middle East gave it the opportunity to start secret talks with Israeli representatives, which led to the agreements signed in Washington in 1993: Arafat returned to the West Bank as head of a autonomous government (the Palestinian National Authority) that initially only had power over Gaza and Jericho (later it would spread to other cities in the West Bank).
The delays and discrepancies in the Israeli withdrawal plan from the occupied territories added difficulty to the process, marred by underlying problems, such as the lack of understanding about the future of Jerusalem (claimed as the capital by both the Israelis and the Palestinians) or the lack of support from Syria.
Arafat's efforts were recognized with the award, together with Rabin, of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord in 1994. The peace project faced great difficulties due to opposition from radicals from both sides. Palestinian extremists committed several attacks and on November 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli ultranationalist.
President of the Palestinian Authority
On January 20, 1996, he was elected president of the Palestinian National Authority, with 87% of the vote. Since 2001 he lived in Ramallah under house arrest by the Israeli authorities, in violation of the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
Private life
Arafat had a very unstable life, and this was also reflected in his relationships. He is linked to a young Egyptian and another Jordanian. He was also a partner of the Uruguayan journalist Isabel Pisano, who dedicated an intimate biography to him and has published controversial statements regarding his death. He married his secretary Suha Tawil in 1990, with whom he had a daughter, Zahwa, born on 24 July 1995 in Paris.
According to controversial statements by the propaganda media, Yasir Arafat would have maintained homosexual ties, although he would have tried to hide this aspect from public opinion. However, these speculations arose based on a claim that he died of HIV, the same claim was later proven false.
Controversy over his death
In 2004 he was transferred to France, where his wife was, to the Hôpital d'Instruction des Armées Percy, a French military hospital in Clamart (near Paris), where he was hospitalized since October 29 and in a coma from November 3.
He died in the early morning of November 11, 2004 at 3:30 local time (2:30 UTC) due to a cerebral hemorrhage according to the media; at 4.40 (3.40 UTC) according to the official statement of the Palestinian National Authority. In September 2005, an Israeli-appointed AIDS expert claimed that Arafat had all the symptoms of AIDS based on medical records obtained. But others, including Patrice Mangin of the University of Lausanne and The New York Times, disputed this claim, insisting that Arafat's record indicated that his cause of death was highly unlikely to be AIDS. Other sources claim that he died from poisoning concocted by the Israeli secret services.
Claude Goasguen, a French parliamentarian, called for a parliamentary inquiry to silence rumors about Arafat's alleged assassination. The French government stated that there was no evidence that Arafat was poisoned, otherwise a criminal investigation would have been opened.
In July 2012, the Qatari news network Al Jazeera published a nine-month investigation in which various tests carried out by the prestigious Center for Legal Medicine at the University Hospital of Lausanne (Switzerland) determined that Arafat's belongings, especially those that had been in contact with his bodily fluids contained an extremely high level of polonium 210, a radioactive material, and that this was not explainable by natural causes, suggesting poisoning as a possible cause of death. The same month, an Israeli expert quoted by the Jerusalem Post newspaper assured that the radioactive remains of polonium 210 fade to less than half in four months, so the high levels discovered in Arafat's clothes indicate that they were "implanted" 3. 4; long after his death.
Palestinian National Authority Chairman Mahmud Abbas ordered the committee tasked with investigating the causes of Arafat's illness and death to try to find out the truth on this issue and agreed to have his body exhumed for that purpose.
A few hours earlier, Suha Arafat, Yasir's widow, had already requested the exhumation of her husband's mortal remains. Finally, on November 27, 2012, the body of Yasir Arafat was exhumed, under Russian supervision, to determine if he was poisoned. Swiss, Russian and French forensic experts took samples of the remains for study. In November 2013, the Swiss team determined that the samples had levels of polonium 210 eighteen times higher than normal. In December of that same year, according to an anonymous source who leaked the findings to the press, an investigation by French justice kept secret concluded that "Arafat was not poisoned, but died of natural causes", as a result of a "generalized infection". Russian experts later confirmed the conclusions of the French investigation.
In January 2018, Israeli journalist and researcher Ronen Bergman in the book Rise and Kill First mentions Israel's use of radiation to kill the Palestinian leader.