Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat, born Mohammed Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat al Qudwa al-Hussein on August 24, 1929, is the nominal head of the Palestinian people, and president of the Palestinian Authority. He was born of Palestinian parents in Cairo, Egypt, and called Rahman by his family. On his mother's side, Arafat is a member of the Husseini family of Jerusalem, the city's traditional leading landowners.

Arafat founded the "Fatah" terror organization in 1962. Following the Six Day War of 1967, he assumed leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Ahmed Shukairy. In September, 1971, Arafat and his Fatah organisation were expelled from Jordan. He subsequently founded the "Black September" terror organization within Fatah, which he used to assassinate Jordanian officials and kidnap Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. His subsequent escape from dozens of assassination attempts by the Israeli Mossad, and his flexible command and control structure permitted him to retain indirect control of a relatively large number of agents inside and outside the Middle East. In 1982, Arafat and Ariel Sharon, then a general of the Israeli army, commanded opposed forces in the Lebanon conflict. Some consider them to have a personal grudge against each other, as the conflict was characterized by very questionable actions on both sides.

However, his organization was recognized by the United Nations. As leader of the PLO, he signed a series of agreements in Oslo in 1992 that created the Palestinian Authority and recognized the existence of the State of Israel - previously recognized only by Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who had been assassinated in part for making peace with Israel.

In 1994, Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin). Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli Jewish extremist, eerily remniscent of the fate of Sadat.

Given the extremely dangerous nature and the frequency of assassination attempts (and successes) in the volatile politics of the Middle East and the "terrorism" associated with it, Arafat's personal and political survival is taken by most Western commentators as a sign of his mastery of asymmetric warfare. The rise of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Al Qaeda organization, fundamentalist militant groups using Islamic rhetoric to motivate suicide attacks, in the 1990s seemed to threaten Arafat's capacity to hold together a secular nationalist organization with a goal of statehood. However, as of 2002, the Israeli government and many neutral commentators were convinced that the Fatah faction's Al Aqsa Brigages had simply adopted the methods of the fundamentalist groups, and were under Arafat's direct command. Critics of Israel and these claims tend to be skeptical, and hold that it is difficult to directly control bombers - a similar structure to that of the the Irish Republican Army and its political wing Sinn Fein seems to have evolved, wherein the political arm can claim plausible deniability of actions undertaken by the military arm.

In 2002, the Arab League made an unprecedented offer to recognize Israel in exchange for statehood for Palestine and Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Ariel Sharon, who had pressured Arafat to speak strongly in Arabic against suicide bombings, not only refused that offer, he sent Israeli forces into the West Bank in large numbers, calling up 20,000 reservists.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1402 condemned the attack and called on Israeli forces to withdraw. Arafat, trapped in his Ramallah compound by Israeli forces, with a cell phone and failing battery, was swarmed by peace activists who walked right past surprised guards at the Israeli checkpoint. He took every opportunity to invoke the name of Rabin, and to exploit press attention. It appears his career is likely to continue.