Yasser Arafat

"I swear to God, I will see [the Palestinian state], whether as a martyr or alive. Please, God, give me the honor of becoming a martyr in the fight for Jerusalem."
Yasser Arafat quoted by John Oswald January 21, 2002 in One Jerusalem



Muhammad Abd al-Rahman ar-Rauf al-Qudwah al-Husayni, affectionately known as Abu Ammar and popularly as Yasser Arafat was born on August 4 or 24, 1929.

Today, November 5, 2004 he lies stateless in a Paris hospital in coma.

Shattered, hopeless and broken. Much like his dream of a homeland for the Palestinians.

After the death of his mother in Cairo, when he was either five or ten he and his brother were dispatched to live with an uncle in Jerusalem. Yasser Arafat grew up in the shadows of the Dome of Al Aqsa.

During the 1956 Suez crisis he was a student in Czechoslovakia. In 1958 he founded Al Fatah.

Following the Six-Day War in 1967, with Egyptian help he set up his headquarters first in Nablus and then in Ramallah. Israelis pushed him away. He moved to Jordan to continue his violent operations to gain freedom for his people. King Hussein (with a Brigadier on loan from Pakistan, Zina Ul Haq, drove Yasser Arafat out and he fled to Tunisia.

Some years back in southern Lebanon Hamas and Hezbollah forced the Isarelis to pull back. Many consider it the first ever defeat of the IDF. But years earlier, in 1968 Fatah scored the first recorded victory over IDF. Here is the quote from ‘wikipedia.’

“In 1968, Fatah was the target of an Israeli Defense Force reprisal on the Jordanian village of Al-Karameh ("honor" in Arabic language), in which 150 Palestinian guerrillas and 29 Israeli soldiers were killed. Despite the high Palestinian death toll, the battle was considered a victory for Fatah because the Israeli army was repulsed. Amid the post-war gloom, the profiles of Arafat and Fatah were raised by this important turning point, as he became to be regarded a national hero who dared to confront Israel, and masses of young Arabs joined the ranks of Fatah.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat

He was charismatic alright. And adamant, autocratic and increasingly inflexible. Qualities that may have contributed at some point in life to resilience. But life moves on. Stuck in this mode Arafat became obsolete and ineffective in later years.

His resolute inflexibility led to the current despair and plight of Palestinians: from a charismatic lovable pariah to a hated pariah to an insignificant pariah he became a symbol of Palestinian impotency. Confined to a devastated compound on the West Bank that he did not leave for three years.

Reputed and rumored to be one of the six wealthiest heads of state, he wasted aid and grants. Periodic IDF intrusions in the occupied territories did not help either. Matthew Kalman quotes Yousef Odeh a butcher in Ramallah in today’s Globe and Mail "Arafat didn’t do anything for us. He only did good things for people around him. They came naked from Tunis, and here became millionaires and built big houses, all on our backs.”

Edward Said once said, "Why provoke a war whose victims would be mostly innocent people when you have neither the military capacity to fight one nor the diplomatic leverage to end it?" Once a member of the PNC (Palestinian National Council) he broke from Yasser Arafat following the Oslo Accords.

Edward also wrote, "I have spent a great deal of my life during the past 35 years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self- determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, co-existence, and not further suppression and denial." (http://www.counterpunch.org/said08052003.html)

What did Yasser Arafat gain for signing the Oslo accord except for the Noble Prize awarded in 1994?

President Bill Clinton tried to negotiate a peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis during the waning days of his presidency. Here is a report quoting Dennis Ross, Clinton’s chief negotiator.

"When he was last in Melbourne, Bill Clinton’s chief negotiator at Camp David, Dennis Ross, described the efforts to salvage those last, lingering drops of optimism from the Oslo years. He told of his discussions with Arafat in the dying days of the Clinton presidency, at perhaps the moment of greatest opportunity to deliver the Palestinian people a state of their own. "

In Arafat’s hands was a document put together at the personal initiative of the US president. The final offer.

Ambassador Ross, for 12 years an interlocutor in the peace process, wanted the Palestinian chairman to be under no illusions. "This is the best thing you ever had," Ross told Arafat. "If you can’t agree to this, I am going to tell you what will happen. Arik Sharon will be the next prime minister of Israel. What was going to be 90 per cent (of the West Bank) will be low 40s. What was going to be a capital in East Jerusalem will be gone. There will be no international security presence.”

Now with Mullah George Bush back for another four years, the US policy on the colonization of the Occupied Territories reversed, the Wall inching towards completion, the Bantustisation of the Occupied Territories is all but inevitable.

Yasser Arafat -- a Palestinian Leader that symbolized the yearning for respect and freedom for his people and ignited their hopes and aspirations. Yasser Arafat -- who let opportunities slip away from him. Leaders when they seize the moment become great. Others are destined to become a footnote. Yasser will not be a martyr, merely another footnote in the Palestinian saga. May he rest in peace.