Yasser Arafat

His early life

Born in Cairo, Egypt, August 24 1929, Yasser Arafat was one of seven
children of a well-to-do merchant. Yasser Arafat was sent to live with
his mother’s brother in Jerusalem when his mother died in 1933. After
spending four years in Jerusalem, Arafat returned to Cairo to be with his
father, with whom Arafat never had close ties. (Arafat did not attend his
father's 1952 funeral.)

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, an underground network that advocated armed
resistance against Israel. 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 (Palestine Liberation Organization).
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.

The PLO
The PLO was created at an Arab summit meeting in 1964 in order to
bring various Palestinian groups together under one organization.
Moving operations to Jordan, Arafat continued to develop the PLO.
Eventually expelled by King Hussein, however, Arafat moved the PLO
to Lebanon, and PLO-driven bombings, shootings and assassinations
against Israel and its concerns were commonplace events, both locally
and regionally, notably with the 1972 murder of Israeli athletes at the
Munich Olympic Games. The PLO was driven out of Lebanon in the
early 1980s, and Arafat soon after launched the intifada ("tremor")
protest movement against Israel occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. The intifada was marked by continual violence in the streets with
Israeli retaliation.

Expansion and The Rise of Yasser Arafat

It was only after the defeat of the Arab states by Israel in the Six-Day
War of June 1967 that the PLO began to be widely recognized as the
representative of the Palestinians and came to promote a distinctively
Palestinian agenda. The defeat discredited the Arab states, and
Palestinians sought greater autonomy in their struggle with Israel. In
1968 leaders of Palestinian guerrilla factions gained representation in the
PNC, and the influence of the more militant and independent-minded
groups within the PLO increased from 1974 Arafat advocated an end to
the PLO’s attacks on targets outside of Israel and sought the world
community’s acceptance of the PLO as the legitimate representative of
the Palestinian people. In 1974 the Arab heads of state recognized the
PLO as the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians, and the
PLO was admitted to full membership in the Arab League in 1976.

Aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War

After Arab armies were defeated yet again on the battlefield in the
October 1973 War, Arafat decided it was necessary to alter his strategy.
The PLO remained committed to the liberation of Palestine through
armed struggle, but decided to shift from strictly terrorist activities to
waging a diplomatic war against Israel.
Arafat deftly manipulated the organization from one perceived by the
(Western) public as barbaric into one slowly being considered a
movement with legitimate claims. This new tack was aided by the all-
important recognition of the PLO by the United Nations, which gave the
organization a foothold into the international body’s deliberations. On
November 13, 1974, Arafat made an unprecedented appearance before
the UN, wearing his military uniform with an empty holster [he was
forced to remove his pistol before entering the chamber] around his
waist, and declared, “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a
freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
Jordan’s claims to represent the Palestinians were then permanently
undercut by the Arab League’s declaration at the Rabat Conference that
the PLO was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
This also enhanced the PLO's standing as a political movement.

Peace on the Horizon?

The year 1988 marked a change for Arafat and the PLO, when Arafat
gave a speech at the United Nations declaring that all involved parties
could live together in peace. The resulting peace process led to the Oslo
Accords of 1993, which allowed for Palestinian self-rule and elections in
the Palestinian territory (in which Arafat was elected president). Around
this time, in 1990, Arafat, at 61 years of age, married a 27-year-old
Palestinian Christian, remaining married until his dying day.)
In 1993, he met for secret peace talks in Norway, which led to the Oslo
Peace Accords with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin. The
agreement granted limited Palestinian self-rule and earned Arafat
and Israel’s Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin the NOBEL PRIZE
for Peace, and the following year they signed a new agreement, Oslo II,
which laid the foundation for a string of peace treaties between the PLO
and Israeli, including the Hebron Protocol (1997), the Wye River
Memorandum (1998), the Camp David Accords (2000) and the
"roadmap for peace" (2002).

Legacy
An assessment of the personality of Yasser Arafat must take into
consideration both his deep religiosity and his fierce nationalism. He
succeeded in putting the Palestinians back on the political map after their
disastrous uprooting in the middle of the 20th century. He was also able
to maintain the unity of a cohesive Palestinian organization in spite of
interference from neighboring Arab states. But Arafat’s shortcomings in
building solid state institutions after 1993 were matched by his
shortcomings in understanding the Israeli public and its fears. At the end
of his life he had reached a state of complete diplomatic isolation—and
yet, as Ḥamās and Fatah continued to vie for influence in the occupied
territories in the years after his death, it looked as though history might
find that he was the last Palestinian leader able to sign a peace
agreement and impose it on the Palestinian community as a whole.