AFP
Yasser Arafat: Mr Palestine
Date: Wed Oct 27
RAMALLAH (AFP) - Yasser Arafat (news - web sites), the standard-bearer of Palestinian nationalism for nearly half a century who was in "critical condition" in the ruins of his West Bank headquarters, has been a virtual prisoner of Israel for almost three years.
His status as the symbol of the Palestinians' fight for their own homeland has never been challenged and his death would leave a huge gap to be filled.
His death, at the age of 75, would also mean that time has finally caught up with a man who carved out a reputation as a great survivor after outliving nearly all his great rivals and even cheating death when he walked away from the wreck of a plane crash in April 1992 in the Libyan desert.
Arafat was born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Hussaini, on August 4, 1929, officially in Jerusalem but possibly in Cairo.
He joined in the 1948 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors which led to the foundation of the Jewish state.
Together with Khalil al-Wazir, Faruq Khaddumi, Salah Khalaf and Mahmud Abbas, he founded the Fatah (news - web sites) movement in 1958 to fight against the Jewish state.
In February 1969, Arafat, who had taken the nom de guerre of Abu Ammar, was elected chairman of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (news - web sites) (PLO).
Short, paunchy and usually sporting stubble, Arafat rose to leadership through the force of his fiery personality, his acute instinct for political survival and his total dedication to the cause.
After securing the leadership within the PLO, Arafat began an odyssey which was to see him wind up in Tunisia after being expelled from Jordan by King Hussein's troops in 1970 and from Lebanon by Israeli forces, led by his nemesis Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), in 1982.
With military options running out and the eruption of the domestically inspired and controlled Palestinian uprising or intifada in the West Bank and Gaza in 1987 he began to negotiate with Israel.
Arafat renounced terrorism in December 1988 and recognized Israel's right to exist, prompting the United States to end a 13-year ban on talks with the PLO.
A Palestinian delegation was included in the Jordanian team to the 1991 Madrid conference which launched a Russian- and US-backed attempt to find a comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
As the Madrid talks dragged on, Israel and the representatives of the PLO began secret direct talks in and around Oslo, Norway.
The resulting first Oslo agreement, signed in Washington in September 1993, ushered in Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) and the West Bank town of Jericho.
Arafat returned to the Palestinian territory in July 1994 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin (news - web sites) and foreign minister Shimon Peres.
But the peace process was derailed when a Jewish extremist gunned down Rabin in November 1995.
Then US president Bill Clinton (news - web sites) brought Arafat and then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak (news - web sites) to his Camp David presidential retreat in July 2000.
But the talks, aimed at a final peace settlement, collapsed, paving the way for the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising two months later.
Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority (news - web sites) in early 1996.
Under heavy international pressure, he reluctantly agreed to appoint his first prime minister, Mahmud Abbas, in April 2003. He lasted less than four months in the job after failing to persuade Arafat to loosen his grip on the control of the security services.
Abbas' successor, Ahmed Qorei, also endured an equally tempestuous relationship with Arafat.
In December 2001, the Israeli army encircled Arafat in his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah, known as the Muqataa, and troops destroyed his fleet of helicopters in Gaza.
SOURCE
Search Yahoo for original story (if it's a story from Yahoo) if they've since changed it from the one I linked to (this happens quite a bit lately and I don't have the time anymore to hunt the original story down) :
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