Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat (born August 24?, 1929, Cairo?, Egypt [see Researcher’s Note]—died November 11, 2004, Paris, France) was the president (1996–2004) of the Palestinian Authority (PA), chairman (1969–2004) of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and leader of Fatah, the largest of the constituent PLO groups. In 1993 he led the PLO to a peace agreement with the Israeli government. Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres of Israel were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994.

Early life

Arafat was one of seven children of a well-to-do merchant and was related, by his father and by his mother, to the prominent al-Ḥusaynī family, which played a major role in Palestinian history (among its members was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Amīn al-Ḥusaynī, a key figure of the opposition to Zionism during the British mandate). In 1949 Arafat began his studies in civil engineering at Cairo’s King Fuʾād University (later Cairo University). He claimed to have fought as a volunteer during the first of the Arab-Israeli wars (1948–49) and then again against the British at the Suez Canal in the early 1950s, although these claims—along with other facts and episodes from his early life—have been disputed. While a student in Egypt, he joined the Union of Palestinian Students and served as its president (1952–56). He was also associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and in 1954, in the crackdown that followed an assassination attempt on Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser by one of their members, Arafat was jailed for being a Brotherhood sympathizer. After his release he completed his studies, graduating with an engineering degree in July 1956. Arafat was subsequently commissioned into the Egyptian army, and in October 1956 he served on behalf of Egypt during the Suez Crisis.

Creation of Fatah

After Suez, Arafat went to Kuwait, where he worked as an engineer and set up his own contracting firm. In 1959 he founded Fatah, a political and military organization, with associates such as Khalīl al-Wazīr (known by the nom de guerre Abū Jihād), Ṣalāḥ Khalaf (Abū ʿIyāḍ), and Khālid al-Ḥassan (Abū Saʿīd)—individuals who would later play important roles in the PLO.

At that time most Palestinians believed that the “liberation of Palestine” would come as a result of Arab unity, of which the first step was the creation of the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria in 1958. Central to Fatah doctrine, however, was the firmly held notion that the liberation of Palestine was primarily the business of Palestinians and should not be entrusted to Arab regimes or postponed until the achievement of an elusive Arab unity. This notion was anathema to the Pan-Arab ideals of Nasser and the Egyptian and Syrian Baʿth parties, which were then the most influential parties in the region.

Second in importance for Arafat and Fatah was the concept of armed struggle, for which the group prepared as early as 1959, following the model of guerrillas fighting in the Algerian War of Independence. Algeria’s independence from France, achieved in 1962, confirmed Arafat’s belief in the soundness of the principle of relying on one’s own strength. Fatah carried out its first armed operation in Israel in December 1964–January 1965, but it was not until after 1967, with the defeat of the Arab forces by Israel in the Six-Day War (June War), that Fatah and the fedayeen (guerillas operating against Israel) became the focus of Palestinian mobilization.

In 1969 Arafat was named chairman of the executive committee of the PLO, an umbrella organization created in 1964 by the Arab League in Jerusalem, which had until then been under the control of the Egyptians. Although Arafat and Fatah were the main players in the PLO, they were not the only ones. Contrary to other liberation movements—such as the National Liberation Front of Algeria, for example, which eliminated all its rivals—Fatah not only had to take into account rival organizations (such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by George Ḥabash, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Nayif Hawātmeh) but also had to cope with interference from various Arab governments. Such interference stemmed largely from the fact that no Arab country was able to consider the Palestinian issue a truly foreign affair. The Syrian and Iraqi Baʿthist regimes, for example, challenged the PLO with their own “Palestinian” organizations (al-Ṣāʿiqah and the Arab Liberation Front, respectively); each maintained deputies within the PLO itself and were funded by and entirely dependent upon their sponsor governments. Indeed, throughout his life Arafat tried to maneuver among these constraints, understanding that the unity of the Palestinians was their best asset.

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After 1967 most of the Fatah forces were based in Jordan, whence they launched attacks against Israel. Not only were the assaults largely unsuccessful, but they also created tension with Jordan’s King Ḥussein that culminated in the king’s decision in September 1970 to put an end to the PLO presence in Jordan altogether. Following Black September, as the expulsion of the PLO came to be known, in 1970–71 the fedayeen migrated to Lebanon, which became their main base until 1982.

Toward diplomacy

After its defeat in Jordan, Fatah moved to international acts of terrorism through its “Black September” organization. In parallel, however, Arafat also began to change course and tried a diplomatic approach, especially after the Yom Kippur War (October War) of 1973. Arafat renounced the idea of liberation of the whole of Palestine and the creation of a democratic state where Muslims, Christians, and Jews would coexist (which meant the destruction of Israel as a state) and accepted the notion of a state comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

In Arab summits in 1973–74, the PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. As a result, the organization was able to open offices in many countries, including in some cities in Europe. In November 1974 Arafat became the first representative of a nongovernmental organization to address a plenary session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. While the United States and Israel considered the group a terrorist organization and refused any official or nonofficial contact with it, a number of European countries soon began political dialogue with the PLO.

In 1975–76 the armed Palestinian presence in Lebanon helped fuel that country’s descent into civil war, and, in spite of Arafat’s early efforts to remain free of it, the PLO was drawn into the fighting. The large-scale intervention of the Syrian army in Lebanon in mid-1976 in support of the Christian right against the PLO-Muslim-left alliance strained relations between Arafat and Syrian Pres. Ḥafiz al-Assad. As a result, Syria alternated between undermining or confronting the PLO (by attacking it directly or indirectly through Palestinian factions) and seeking to draw it into its orbit (by attempting to establish a sort of protectorate over it). Arafat, however, suspicious of Syria, strove to maintain PLO autonomy.

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon forced Arafat to abandon his Beirut headquarters at the end of August 1982 and set up a new headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia. Conflict between Syria and Arafat broadened in the wake of the Israeli invasion, and Syria took advantage of a rift in the PLO to support anti-Arafat factions, hoping to remove Arafat and restyle the PLO as a pro-Syrian organization. Although Arafat tried to return to Lebanon in 1983, he was besieged by Fatah rebels supported by Syria and was again forced into exile. Syria’s actions, however, bolstered support for Arafat among many Palestinians, and, as the PLO split healed, Arafat was subsequently able to reaffirm his leadership.

The outbreak in December 1987 of the first intifāḍah (Arabic: “shaking off”)—large-scale riots and demonstrations that would continue for more than five years—gave Arafat new, much-needed legitimacy following his departure from Beirut and confirmed Palestinian support for the PLO from within the Palestinian territories. Although the intifāḍah empowered Arafat, it also marked the birth of the militant Islamist organization Ḥamās, which would later become Fatah’s main challenger in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In November 1988 Arafat led the PLO to recognize UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (the famous partition plan of November 1947) and UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 (which called for an end to the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War, respectively). He also announced the establishment of an independent Palestinian state (without defined borders), of which he was nominated president. Within days more than 25 countries (including the Soviet Union and Egypt but excluding the United States and Israel) had extended recognition to the government-in-exile.