Longtime leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, militantly opposed to Israeli domination of the Palestinian people. A wily old warlord whose continued grip on power survived countless challenges, but who failed in the transformation from leader to statesman.
Formative years
Yasser Arafat was born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Hussaeini on Aug. 24, 1929. He says he was born in Jerusalem; his original birth documents say he was born in Cairo, Egypt, to parents of Palestinian descent. "Yasser" is a nickname, meaning "easy."
When he was five, Arafat's mother died and he was sent to live with a maternal uncle in Jerusalem. At the time, Palestine was under British administration, and his uncle was an advocate for Palestinian autonomy; Arafat claims that one of his earliest memories is of British soldiers raiding his uncle's house in the middle of the night.
When he was nine, Arafat went back to Cairo, where he was cared for by an older sister. He spent the rest of his youth there, and by his late teens he was working for a pro-Palestinian underground, helping smuggle arms to Palestine to be used against the British rulers and the growing Jewish population.
The formal attempt to establish Israel as a Jewish state in 1947 touched off a war between it and its Arab neighbours (which is essentially still going on). Yasser Arafat was studying civil engineering at the University of Faud I (which became the University of Cairo), but left to join the fight against Israeli authority in Gaza.
The Arabs lost. Arafat fled to the United States and studied briefly at the University of Texas, before going back to finish his engineering degree in Cairo. He re-connected with the reeling Palestinian activist community, and was busy in student politics (and the later-banned Muslim Brotherhood) till he graduated in 1956.
For the next eight years, Arafat divided his time between agitating against Israel and trying to make a living. He worked as an engineer in Egypt for a while, then moved to Kuwait and worked for the ministry in charge of public works there before starting his own small contracting company. At the same time, he co-founded Al-Fatah, a little network of anti-Israel militants that put out a regular collection of screeds calling for another armed attack.
Full-time fighter
In 1964, at age 35, Arafat moved to Jordan and committed to fighting Israel full-time, mostly as a guerrilla raiding Israeli border settlements. That same year, the Arab League founded the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The PLO was intended to be a sort of safety valve against pressure from Palestinian groups, many of which were operating independently just about everywhere in the Arab world: the PLO would bring them together where Arab countries' leaders could keep an eye on them and have a say in their plans. The PLO's initial position toward Israel was officially conciliatory, trying to find a negotiated peace between Palestinians and Israel.
Conciliation didn't work; the Arab states (led by Egypt) launched the catastrophic Six-Day War in 1967. The war revealed the Arab League's apparent willingness to negotiate a peace as a sham. The Arab countries had to win, so the destruction of their credibility wouldn't matter. They lost, which left Arab unity against Israel in shambles.
Al-Fatah, Arafat's group, emerged as the most intact faction in the PLO after the Six-Day War, and Arafat became the chairman of the PLO executive committee in 1969. Al-Fatah had been one of the more militant PLO factions, and Arafat was determined to cut it loose of its newly enfeebled state sponsors.
Arafat built the PLO into a quasi-state in Jordan, renewing his old border raids on a grand scale. King Hussein was eventually so concerned that the PLO would provoke the Israelis into massive response that he kicked Arafat's organization out. It took new root in Lebanon, but was again ejected when Israel invaded. Its headquarters moved to Tunis for the next several years.
Radical components of the PLO, with Arafat's support, launched a series of terrorist attacks aimed in Israel's general direction in the late 1970s, which brought world attention to the PLO's cause. Yasser Arafat, its champion, became a target of Israeli assassination attempts, but always managed to survive despite the best efforts of the Mossad.
Arafat is believed to have backed Black September, a terrorist group that murdered more than 20 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. PLO members were also responsible for a series of high-profile airplane hijackings throughout the 1970s and '80s.
Moves toward peace
In 1988, Arafat began the current phase of his relationship with Israel by making a speech at a special session of the United Nations in Geneva (he was refused entry to the United States, so he couldn't speak in New York City). In the speech, he appeared to sue for peace, publicly acknowledging Israel's right to exit in peace -- though he linked it to the same right for Palestine.
The next few years brought unprecedented progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, a former general and decorated war hero, had the credibility to try to negotiate a peace, and Arafat participated in several rounds of talks that culminated in an accord (partly brokered by U.S. president Bill Clinton) and Nobel Peace Prizes for Arafat, Rabin, and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres.
Then Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist, and everything fell apart.
Modern period
The Oslo Accord included provision for a Palestinian National Authority to govern large parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Arafat was elected its president when it was formed in 1996. Running the PNA brought a set of challenges for which Arafat turned out to be poorly equipped -- it's much easier to call for armed revolt than to lead a quasi-government, and Arafat has been much more a dictator than a democrat. Besides which, Palestinian extremists, such as the members of Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, weren't satisfied with the creation of the PNA, seeing it as just a step toward their ultimate goal: the eradication of Israel.
So the Oslo peace agreement didn't bring peace. Israelis responded by electing the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister later in 1996, and whatever difficulties Arafat had in running the PNA, Netanyahu made them worse by refusing to give him any room to manoeuvre. Israel retained certain security guarantees in the Oslo Accord, and Netanyahu never hesitated to impose a lockdown on Palestinian territory, for example, whenever violence flared.
Commentators sympathetic to Israel have pointed out, reasonably, that the differing natures of Palestinian and Israeli demands in peace negotiations makes a final successful settlement very difficult: Israel wants peace, which is intangible, while the Palestinians want relatively concrete things like an autonomous government and territorial concessions. There's nothing to stop Palestinian extremists from breaking the peace, but it's difficult to take territorial concessions back.
Those same commentators argue that Arafat constantly takes advantage of that fact. Arafat certainly has not been vigorous in cracking down on the extremists in his territory, though he disavows their actions and usually issues condemnations after Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel. They say he tries to have his cake and eat it, too.
After the collapse of a 2000 deal with dovish prime minister Ehud Barak, Arafat's position became newly imperiled. After Arafat repudiated the agreement -- which many say was the best deal the Palestinians will ever get -- militants follwed up with a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks on Israeli civilians. Barak lost his government and was replaced by Ariel Sharon, a hawk of long standing, nicknamed "the Bulldozer." Sharon responded with symbolic attacks on Palestinian Authority buildings and facilities essential to Arafat's continued power, and eventually confined him to a compound in Ramallah called the Muqata.
Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush ultimately decided (with what degree of co-ordination is unclear) to sideline Arafat as an "obstacle to peace." Bush publicly declared that no Palestinian-Israeli settlement would be possible with Arafat at the head of the Palestinian Authority. Arafat was eventually convinced to appoint a prime minister, while he continued to serve as president. The first nominee, Mamoud Abbas, shortly resigned after a bitter dispute with Arafat over which of them would control the security services. His successor, Ahmed Qureia, managed to stay in office, but produced no noticeable movement toward a lasting peace, or much improved government internally.
Death
At age 75, Arafat grew increasingly feeble, subject to more and more flus and stomach ailments. On Oct. 29, 2004, with his health deteriorating under the influence of an unspecified blood disorder, Arafat was helicoptered out of Ramallah and to a military hospital near Paris.
A strange but brief soap opera ensued, with his young wife Suha guarding his condition from the media and even Palestinain authorities. Suha Arafat eventually granted both Abbas and Qureia access.
Suffering from organ failure and a brain haemorrhage, Arafat lingered on life support for several days. He died on Nov. 11 and was buried on the grounds of the Muqata, after the quick funeral prescribed by Islam was carried out in Cairo.
Arafat was notoriously ill-kempt, usually appearing in grubby green military fatigues, headscarf, and scruffy beard. A famous Doonesbury cartoon in the late 1970s commented that if Arafat had had a nice suit, he'd have had a country by then.