Yasser Arafat

On 17 July 1990, at the age of 61, Yasser Arafat married Suha Daoud Tawil, a 27 year old Roman Catholic. After marriage, she converted to Islam. Their only child, Zahwa, was born on 24 July 1995.

On 25 October 2004, Arafat was suddenly taken ill. He was shortly taken to Paris and admitted to the Percy military hospital, where he lapsed into coma on 3 November. He died on 11 November 2004 of a massive hemorrhagic cerebrovascular accident at the age of 75.

On 12 November, his body, draped in Palestinian Flag, was sent to Cairo, where a brief military funeral was held. It was attended by several heads of governments. Egypt's top Muslim cleric Sayed Tantawi led the prayers.

Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa, popularly known as Yasser Arafat, was born on 24 August 1929 most probably in Cairo. Some also claim that he was born in his maternal uncle’s house in Jerusalem where his mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, used to go for child-birth.

His father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was originally from Gaza City in Palestine; but later moved to Cairo to claim the legacy of his Egyptian mother. Although he failed to achieve his objective, he became a successful textile merchant, having his establishment in Cairo's religiously mixed Sakakini District.

Yasser Arafat was born sixth of his parents’ seven children, having a younger brother named Fathi Arafat. Among his older siblings were two brothers named Jamal and Mustafa and two sisters named Inam and Khadija.

In 1933, when he was four years old, his mother died from kidney ailment. Unable to raise his younger children by himself, his father sent him and his younger brother Fathi to live in Jerusalem with his childless maternal uncle, Salim Abul Saud.

In 1937, Yasser Arafat was brought back to Cairo. However, his father, by then married to an Egyptian woman, failed to provide any kind of emotional support to his eight year old son, resulting in a distant and often strained relationship between them.

In Kuwait, Yasser Arafat was first employed in the department of public works; later, he opened his own contracting firm. Concurrently, he continued being involved in politics, contributing the profit from his business to the Palestinian cause.

In 1958, Arafat, along with Khalīl al-Wazīr, Ṣalāḥ Khalaf, and Khālid al-Ḥassan, he founded a new Palestinian nationalist movement called ‘Fatah’, a name derived from reverse acronym for ‘Harakat al-Tahrir al-Filastinivva’. In the same year, he was elected to its central committee.

Operating both as a political organization and an underground military outfit, Fatah advocated armed struggle against the Israelis. Following the model of guerrillas fighting in the Algerian War of Independence, they started preparing for guerilla warfare as early as in 1959.

In 1959, Arafat launched a magazine called ‘Filastin-na’ (Our Palestine), which also advocated an armed struggle against Israel. This was also the time, when he first started donning the checkered scarf, kufiyah, and adopted the fighting name ‘Abu Amar’.

To work independently, Yasser Arafat refused to take donations from Arab governments without actually alienating them. Instead, he started contacting well-to-do Palestinians living abroad for donations.

In 1964, Arab countries floated an umbrella organization called Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). While Yasser Arafat kept in touch with it, he continued to work alone, setting up number of camps along Jordan-Israel border, carrying out his first armed operation on 31 December 1964.

He came to international limelight during the 1968 Battle of Karameh. As his face appeared on the cover of Time Magazine’s 13 December 1968 issue, Arafat’s position became stronger. Fatah now emerged as a dominant group within PLO, whose creditability was lost due to defeat in the Six-Days-War in 1967.

On 4 February, 1969, Arafat was elected Chairman of PLO. In this position, he had to work closely with other constituents, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and cope with governmental interference.

By 1970, PLO started having trouble with the King of Jordan, who in September sent forces to raid fedayeen camps along its border, forcing them to migrate to Lebanon. Thereafter until 1982, they continued carrying on guerilla attack from their base in Lebanon.

In 1971, a breakaway group called ‘Black September’ was formed, who began to carry on terrorist attack in different locations. In reality, they took their orders from Fatah, while maintaining an apparent distance.