76 Facts About Yasir Arafat

Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, popularly known as Yasser Yasir Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader.

Yasir Arafat was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1969 to 2004 and President of the Palestinian National Authority from 1994 to 2004.

From 1983 to 1993, Yasir Arafat based himself in Tunisia, and began to shift his approach from open conflict with the Israelis to negotiation.

Yasir Arafat engaged in a series of negotiations with the Israeli government to end the conflict between it and the PLO.

The success of the negotiations in Oslo led to Yasir Arafat being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, alongside Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, in 1994.

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Yasir Arafat's father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza City, whose mother, Yasser's paternal grandmother, was Egyptian.

Yasir Arafat's father battled in the Egyptian courts for 25 years to claim family land in Egypt as part of his inheritance but was unsuccessful.

Yasir Arafat worked as a textile merchant in Cairo's religiously mixed Sakakini District.

Yasir Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along with his younger brother Fathi, the only offspring born in Cairo.

Yasir Arafat's first visit to Jerusalem came when his father, unable to raise seven children alone, sent Yasser and his brother Fathi to their mother's family in the Moroccan Quarter of the Old City.

Yasir Arafat had a deteriorating relationship with his father; when he died in 1952, Yasir Arafat did not attend the funeral, nor did he visit his father's grave upon his return to Gaza.

In 1944, Yasir Arafat enrolled in the University of King Fuad I and graduated in 1950.

However, instead of joining the ranks of the Palestinian fedayeen, Yasir Arafat fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood, although he did not join the organization.

In early 1949, the war was winding down in Israel's favor, and Yasir Arafat returned to Cairo from a lack of logistical support.

In 1990, Yasir Arafat married Suha Tawil, a Palestinian Christian, when he was 61 and Suha, 27.

Since Yasir Arafat was raised in Cairo, the tradition of dropping the Mohammed or Ahmad portion of one's first name was common; notable Egyptians such as Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak did so.

However, Yasir Arafat dropped Abdel Rahman and Abdel Raouf from his name as well.

Yasir Arafat originally attempted to obtain a visa to Canada and later Saudi Arabia, but was unsuccessful in both attempts.

Yasir Arafat had met Abu Iyad while attending Cairo University and Abu Jihad in Gaza.

Yasir Arafat did not want to alienate them, and sought their undivided support by avoiding ideological alliances.

Yasir Arafat continued this process in other Arab countries, such as Libya and Syria.

Fatah's manpower was incremented further after Yasir Arafat decided to offer new recruits much higher salaries than members of the Palestine Liberation Army, the regular military force of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was created by the Arab League in 1964.

Yasir Arafat was detained in Syria's Mezzeh Prison when a Palestinian Syrian Army officer, Yusef Urabi, was killed.

Barely a week after the defeat, Yasir Arafat crossed the Jordan River in disguise and entered the West Bank, where he set up recruitment centers in Hebron, the Jerusalem area and Nablus, and began attracting both fighters and financiers for his cause.

Some have alleged that Yasir Arafat himself was on the battlefield, but the details of his involvement are unclear.

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The battle was covered in detail by Time, and Yasir Arafat's face appeared on the cover of the 13 December 1968 issue, bringing his image to the world for the first time.

Yasir Arafat became Commander-in-Chief of the Palestinian Revolutionary Forces two years later, and in 1973, became the head of the PLO's political department.

Yasir Arafat refused, citing his belief in the need for a Palestinian state with Palestinian leadership.

Yasir Arafat, bowing to pressure from Arab governments, publicly condemned the hijackings and suspended the PFLP from any guerrilla actions for a few weeks.

Yasir Arafat had taken the same action after the PFLP attacked Athens Airport.

Israel and the US have alleged that Yasir Arafat was involved in the 1973 Khartoum diplomatic assassinations, in which five diplomats and five others were killed.

Israel claimed that Yasir Arafat was in ultimate control over these organizations and therefore had not abandoned terrorism.

An example of that, we find in March 1973 that Yasir Arafat tried to arrange for a meeting between the President of Iraq and the Emir of Kuwait in order to resolve their disputes.

Yasir Arafat became the first representative of a non-governmental organization to address a plenary session of the UN General Assembly.

Yasir Arafat's speech increased international sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

Yasir Arafat was Amin's best man at his wedding in Uganda in 1975.

Yasir Arafat sent his army, along with the Syrian-backed Palestinian factions of as-Sa'iqa and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command led by Ahmad Jibril to fight alongside right-wing Christian forces against the PLO and the LNM.

Yasir Arafat was reluctant to respond with force, but many other Fatah and PLO members felt otherwise.

Yasir Arafat returned to Lebanon a year after his eviction from Beirut, this time establishing himself in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.

Yasir Arafat did not return to Lebanon after his second expulsion, though many Fatah fighters did.

In 1985 Yasir Arafat narrowly survived an Israeli assassination attempt when Israeli Air Force F-15s bombed his Tunis headquarters as part of Operation Wooden Leg, leaving 73 people dead; Yasir Arafat had gone out jogging that morning.

The following year Yasir Arafat had his operational headquarters in Baghdad for some time.

Yasir Arafat had considered Abu Jihad as a PLO counterweight to local Palestinian leadership in the territories, and led a funeral procession for him in Damascus.

Yasir Arafat accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242 and Israel's right "to exist in peace and security" and Arafat's statements were greeted with approval by the US administration, which had long insisted on these statements as a necessary starting point for official discussions between the US and the PLO.

On 2 April 1989, Yasir Arafat was elected by the Central Council of the Palestine National Council, the governing body of the PLO, to be the president of the proclaimed State of Palestine.

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Yasir Arafat made this decision without the consent of other leading members of Fatah and the PLO.

Yasir Arafat's decision severed relations with Egypt and many of the oil-producing Arab states that supported the US-led coalition.

Yasir Arafat narrowly escaped death again on 7 April 1992, when an Air Bissau aircraft he was a passenger on crash-landed in the Libyan Desert during a sandstorm.

Yasir Arafat insisted that financial support was imperative to establishing this authority and needed it to secure the acceptance of the agreements by the Palestinians living in those areas.

In 1994, Yasir Arafat moved to Gaza City, which was controlled by the Palestinian National Authority —the provisional entity created by the Oslo Accords.

Yasir Arafat became the President and Prime Minister of the PNA, the Commander of the PLA and the Speaker of the PLC.

Yasir Arafat established an executive committee or cabinet composed of twenty members.

Yasir Arafat began subordinating non-governmental organizations that worked in education, health, and social affairs under his authority by replacing their elected leaders and directors with PNA officials loyal to him.

Yasir Arafat then appointed himself chairman of the Palestinian financial organization that was created by the World Bank to control most aid money towards helping the new Palestinian entity.

Yasir Arafat established a Palestinian police force, named the Preventive Security Service, that became active on 13 May 1994.

Yasir Arafat assigned Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub to head the PSS.

On 20 January 1996, Yasir Arafat was elected president of the PNA, with an overwhelming 88.

Yasir Arafat continued negotiations with Netanyahu's successor, Ehud Barak, at the Camp David 2000 Summit in July 2000.

Yasir Arafat rejected Barak's offer and refused to make an immediate counter-offer.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, stated in September 2010 that Yasir Arafat had instructed Hamas to launch what he termed "military operations" against Israel in 2000 when Yasir Arafat felt that negotiations with Israel would not succeed.

Yasir Arafat was enjoying the support of groups that, given his own history, would normally have been quite wary of dealing with or supporting him.

Yasir Arafat was finally allowed to leave his compound on 2 May 2002 after intense negotiations led to a settlement: six PFLP militants, including the organization's secretary-general Ahmad Sa'adat, wanted by Israel, who had been holed up with Yasir Arafat in his compound, would be transferred to international custody in Jericho.

Yasir Arafat issued such a call on 8 May On 19 September 2002, the IDF largely demolished the compound with armored bulldozers in order to isolate Arafat.

In March 2003, Yasir Arafat ceded his post as Prime Minister to Mahmoud Abbas amid pressures by the US.

Yasir Arafat had a mixed relationship with the leaders of other Arab nations.

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In 2003 the International Monetary Fund conducted an audit of the PNA and stated that Yasir Arafat had diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account controlled by himself and the PNA Chief Economic Financial adviser.

Fuad Shubaki, former financial aide to Yasir Arafat, told the Israeli security service Shin Bet that Yasir Arafat used several million dollars of aid money to buy weapons and support militant groups.

Israeli government tried for decades to assassinate Yasir Arafat, including attempting to intercept and shoot down private aircraft and commercial airliners on which he was believed to be traveling.

Yasir Arafat was admitted to the Percy military hospital in Clamart, a suburb of Paris.

French doctors said that Yasir Arafat suffered from a blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, although it is inconclusive what brought about the condition.

When Yasir Arafat's death was announced, the Palestinian people went into a state of mourning, with Qur'anic mourning prayers emitted from mosque loudspeakers throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and tires burned in the streets.

The next day, Yasir Arafat's body was flown from Paris aboard a French Air Force transport plane to Cairo, Egypt, for a brief military funeral there, attended by several heads of states, prime ministers and foreign ministers.

Yasir Arafat was buried in a stone, rather than wooden, coffin, and Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat said that Yasir Arafat would be reburied in East Jerusalem following the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In September 2005, an Israeli AIDS expert claimed that Yasir Arafat bore all the symptoms of AIDS based on obtained medical records.

Vladimir Uiba, the head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, said that Yasir Arafat died of natural causes and the agency had no plans to conduct further tests.

In March 2015, a French prosecutor closed a 2012 French inquiry, stating that French experts had determined Yasir Arafat's death was of natural causes, and that the polonium and lead traces found were environmental.