Arafat, Yasser (b. 24 Aug. 1929, d. 11 Nov. 2004). Palestinian leader 1969– Born in Jerusalem (according to other sources born on 21 March 1929 in Cairo), he participated in the war against Israeli independence (1948–9). As a student of electrical engineering in Cairo from 1951 he founded the General Union of Palestinian Students. He fought in the
Suez Crisis in the Egyptian army, and then went to work as an engineer in Kuwait, 1957–65. There, he co-founded and led the al-
Fatah movement, which from 1969 became the leading movement within the
PLO. In February 1969 he became president of the PLO's executive council. His subsequent career was marked by a series of political and military miscalculations, as impressive personal comebacks oscillated with repeated failures to seize the right moment and consolidate his gains. Under his leadership, the PLO was expelled from Jordan 1970–1, Beirut 1982, Damascus and Tripoli 1983, and south Lebanon 1988. Partly as a result, there were increasing splits in the movement, especially after he became more pragmatic in his search for a negotiated peace settlement with Israel. In 1990 he became isolated in his support for Saddam
Hussein in the
Gulf War, while his support for the
August coup in the USSR was peculiarly out of touch.
His survival as Palestinian leader is, therefore, a testament to his unrivalled sensitivity towards Palestinian opinion at the grass roots—about what it would, at the end of the day, accept. A dreadful public speaker, he was always helped by his opponents' underestimation. Ultimately, his dogged pursuit of international recognition, and his renunciation of violence in 1988, finally convinced Israel that he was the country's best hope of achieving a peace with the Palestinians. He negotiated the
Oslo Accords and the
Gaza–Jericho Agreement, and subsequently steered a difficult course in trying to maintain the support of the areas under his control, despite strong opposition from more radical groups such as
Hezbollah and
Hamas. In 1996, he scored an important victory when he was elected President of the newly created
Palestinian National Authority with a high voter turnout, despite the campaign by his rivals to abstain. While he governed an extremely poor and disparate territory, he did little to create structures that would offer hope to a war-torn and impoverished population. He thus indirectly contributed to his increasingly difficult position between a population impatient for Palestinian independence, and ready for more violence, and an Israeli government which since
Rabin's assassination had lost its assuredness in dealings with the PLO. He agreed to the
Wye accords in 1998, but these were never implemented in full. Arafat refused a peace deal brokered in the dying days of the
Clinton administration and the
Barak government, because it did not involve complete Palestinian control over East Jerusalem. This helped bring down Barak, who was replaced by Arafat's archenemy,
Sharon. Sharon put Arafat under house arrest in March 2002, in an attempt to clamp down on the
Intifadah. Given the heterogeneity of the Palestinian movement, Arafat remained an important point of approach for the US and the EU. As a result, Sharon was forced to give up the siege of Arafat's headquarters. In April 2003, Arafat was forced to concede powers to a cabinet, but he remained the ultimate source of political authority inside Palestine.
