November 11, 2004
Yasser Arafat led the Palestinians' ongoing struggle for statehood for half a century, and did more than anyone else to put their cause on the world agenda.
Arafat was born as Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini in Egypt in 1929, though he also claimed his birthplace was Jerusalem. His mother died when he was four, and he was raised by his older sister.
From his earliest life, Arafat worked tirelessly to support the Palestinian cause and improve the plight of his people. As a teenager, he helped Palestinian fighters resisting Jewish attempts to take control over Palestine. According to reports he helped smuggle weapons to the fighters in the 1948 war.
He travelled to Egypt for studies where he formed the Palestinian Graduate Association. This group sent volunteers to the Egyptian front to resist British, French and Israeli forces during the Suez crisis in 1956.
Following his graduation with an engineering degree, Arafat got employment in Kuwait. There in 1957, he formed the Fatah movement, which later came to serve as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's largest and most popular faction.
In 1965, Fatah opened its first office in Algeria within Arafat's efforts to seek a greater Arab awareness of the Palestinian issue. Throughout his life he survived assassination attempts and a plane crash and managed to bounce back after serious political and military defeats.
In 1974, the PLO became an observer in the United Nations. Arafat dramatically appeared at the UN bearing an olive branch and a gun, saying said: "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."
Arafat surprised many by his decision at the age of 62 to marry his young Christian secretary, Suha. They had a daughter who was born in 1995. Arafat had previously always rejected marriage, saying he was married to the Palestinian cause.
His political career was a chequered one: while his determination to see a Palestinian state has won international respect, other decisions lost him critical support. In 1990 he supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein against Kuwait, which destroyed his support in the Gulf states and marginalised the Palestinian cause.
But Arafat took a giant step towards his dream of Palestinian statehood when he signed an agreement in 1993 for Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
In 1994 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his achievement, an award he shared with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Accepting the award, Arafat said that: "Peace will enable us to show our identity to the world, our real identity to the world."
Two years later, Arafat became the first elected president of the Palestinian Authority, the closest he would come to fulfilling his dream of presiding over an independent Palestinian state.
In his last years, Arafat was confined to his headquarters in Ramallah by Israeli forces, a controversial decision that won great sympathy for the Palestinians.
Arafat's vision was one of "an independent nation having a lot of democracy and caring for its children and where laughter is heard of happy, healthy children." But it was not to be realised in his lifetime.
Despite this, Arafat is remembered and revered by the Palestinian people as a figurehead and the leader or their quest for a homeland.
