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Yasser Arafat: President Yasser Arafat
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An Arab, Yasser Arafat was among those Palestinians who resisted the creation of a Jewish state in 1948. During the 1950s and '60 Arafat led underground military operations as the leader of the guerilla group Al Fatah, and in 1969 he was named head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). By 1974 he was recognized as the one key spokesman for the Palestinian people. The PLO's attacks on Jewish citizens, most notably the killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, gave Arafat a worldwide reputation as a terrorist leader, yet in the 1980s he ... managed to take on the role of a statesman willing to use diplomacy to achieve his ends. Secret meetings in Norway with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1993 resulted in a peace agreement, and the three men shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. In 1996 Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian National Authority.
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TO SAY THAT Yasser Arafat was the embodiment of the Palestinian national cause, as many of his obituaries did, is true enough -- but it is ... unfair to those he leaves behind. The people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are among the most able, educated, entrepreneurial and politically sophisticated of the Middle East; they are more than capable of creating the peaceful and democratic state that President Bush and the United Nations have proposed for them. Mr. Arafat did more than anyone else to forge their national identity as Palestinians and to place their cause at the center of global affairs. But he also poisoned his movement with terrorism and sabotaged it through his refusal to embrace the settlement with Israel that was possible years ago. Unlike many of his followers, Mr. Arafat was autocratic, corrupt, deceiving and, ultimately, unwilling to unambiguously accept Israel's permanence. His death has prompted an understandable outpouring of grief from Palestinians, including those who fiercely opposed him.
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[M]ore than four decades, since he founded Fatah in 1959 and then the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964, Yasser Arafat has enjoyed the flattering glare of the international spotlight. Whole generations of generals and peace envoys, a half-dozen U.S. presidents and entire Arab regimes have come and gone, but Mr. Arafat has kept himself in power – even as he has failed his people and pursued policies that have added to their distress. Other Arab leaders have long since stopped trusting him, taking it for granted that he will not honor the agreements he has signed. Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak once referred to him, in the presence of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, as “a son of a dog.” Mr. Arafat is one of the inventors of modern terrorism and continues to instigate it to this day.
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Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority who died on Thursday, leaves the governing body he headed in a state of turmoil despite the appointment of an interim successor. (Nov. 11, 2004)
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Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who rose from guerrilla icon to Nobel prize-winning peacemaker only to fall into isolation amid new violence with Israel, was declared dead in a Paris hospital November 10, 2004, officials said. The 75-year-old Palestinian president's death, announced at his West Bank headquarters of Ramallah, ended days of rumors over his condition. An undated picture by Palestinian Artist, Ismail Shammout
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"The state of President Yasser Arafat's health has not worsened. It is considered stable since the previous health bulletin," Christian Estripeau, head of communications for French military health services, said in a brief statement.
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President Yasser Arafat