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 was one of the founders of the "Fatah" terror organization in 1964. Following the Six-Day War of 1967, he assumed leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Ahmed Shukairy. In September 1970, Arafat and his Fatah organisation were expelled from Jordan into Lebanon. He subsequently founded the "Black September" terror organization within Fatah, which was used to assassinate Jordanian officials and kidnap Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

His subsequent escape from several assassination attempts by Israel, 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, and links with other groups, e.g. Hezbollah.

In 1982, after several dozen lethal terrorist attacks by Fatah from the civil war-stricken Lebanon (at a time, South Lebanon was called the "Fatahland" by the Israelis), the Israeli leadership under Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon decided to attack the Palestinian terrorist forces in Lebanon. For ten weeks Arafat was under siege in West Beirut. Eventually, an agreement was made between him, the Americans and Israel that would essentially exile him to Tunisia, where he stayed for the next 11 years.

Arafat did not disappear, however, from the political horizon. He was recognized by several entities (most important, the United Nations) as the leader of the Palestinian people. From Tunisia he commanded the First Intifada. As leader of the PLO, he signed a series of agreements, the most important of which were the Oslo Accords of September 1993, that led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority and the de-jure recognition by the Palestinians of the right of the State of Israel to exist - previously recognized in the Arab world 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 and propaganda, and his skill as a tactician.

His ability to adapt to new tactical and political situations is perhaps exemplified by the rise of Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, Palestinian fundamentalist militant groups using Islamic rhetoric to motivate suicide attacks. In the 1990s, these seemed to threaten Arafat's capacity to hold together a secular nationalist organization with a goal of statehood. They appeared to be wholly out of Arafat's influence and control, and were fighting with Fatah.

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. What is more, spokesmen for Hamas and Islamic Jihad were publicly supporting Arafat. Critics of Israel and these claims tend to be skeptical, and argue 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.

Others simply point to the constraints of the political situation, and argue that Arafat could neither condemn nor constrain the tactics employed - and that any attempt to do so could simply result in him being assassinated. Furthermore, refusal to employ asymmetric warfare amounts to a de facto surrender to Israel, which has access to weapons that Palestinians so far lack. The use of suicide bombers appears to be a permanent feature of this conflict. The number and intensity of attacks rose sharply in the first months of 2002.

In March 2002, the Arab League made an offer to recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli retreat from all territories captured in the Six-Day War and statehood for Palestine and Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Critics of this offer say that it would constitute a heavy blow to Israel's security, while not even guaranteeing Israel the cessation of suicide bombing attacks (which were simply ignored so far by the Palestinian Authority). Israel, as they say, is looking for solid foundations for peace, and not declarations devoid of essence.

The Arab League offer conincided, however, with yet another upsurge of Palestinian terrorism against Israel (some of which from the Arafat's own Fatah militants), that led to more than 50 Israeli dead. Ariel Sharon has previously pressured Arafat to speak strongly in Arabic against frequent suicide bombings; following the attacks, he declared that Arafat assisted the terrorists and therefore made himself an enemy of Israel and obviously irrelevant to any immediate peace negotiations. The declaration was followed by Israeli entry to the cities of the West Bank.

There was some speculation that lack of personal trust between the two men played a part in this escalation. However, Sharon's actions were not unprecedented, being strongly reminiscent, for example, of the American actions during the attack on Afghanistan.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1402 condemned the Israeli incursions 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. Persistent attempts by the Israeli government to identify another Palestinian leader to deal with had failed - and Arafat was enjoying the support of groups that, given his own history, would normally have been quite wary of dealing with him or of supporting him.