Arafat's... legacy?

[Duke]

From the National Review -

November 12, 2004, 8:27 a.m.
The Father of Modern Terrorism
The true legacy of Yasser Arafat

For the last week of his life, the scuttlebutt about the Palestinian movement's centrifugal force concerned whether his impending demise was driven by AIDS, likely contracted, according to leaked foreign-intelligence reports, by his omnivorous, orgiastic sexual appetite. This as if, after three quarters of a century's worth of megalo-sadism, additional indicia of Yasser Arafat's throbbing depravity were somehow necessary. And so, evidently, they were. Thus is reflection on his life, a signal emblem of the late 20th century's triumph of terror and fraud over security and reason, as instructive about our times as it is about him.

A Thug's Life
About him, while there is much to say, there is little to glean. He was a thug. One of the most cunning of all time for sure, but quite simply a ruthless, thoroughly corrupt, will-to-power thug.

As is often the case in the modern information age, just about everything in his life is known and almost nothing in his proffered legend is true. The man airbrushed in Thursday-morning encomiums from Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac (among others) as the courageous symbol of Palestinian nationalism was not really named Yasser Arafat, was not a native Palestinian, and tended to sit out warfare with Israel whenever conventional fighting was involved.

Although he occasionally claimed to have hailed from what are now the Palestinian territories, Muhammad Abdel Rahman Abdel Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini was actually born in Egypt in 1929, the fifth child of a well-to-do merchant. He was educated in Cairo, although, after his mother's death when he was four, he lived at least part of the time with an uncle in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was then the heart of the territory known as Mandatory Palestine, which chafed under British rule as a result of a 1918 League of Nations mandate. The era, to put it kindly, was not the Crown's finest hour. Sowing seeds for recriminations that persist to this day, the Brits appeared during WWI to promise some or all of the territory alternatively to Arabs and to Jews, only to exacerbate matters by keeping Palestine themselves for three decades.

Arafat's formative years were thus spent in a milieu of sectarian violence, annealed in a hatred for Jews that, far from ever subsiding, propelled him. As an engineering student in Cairo during World War II, he was powerfully influenced by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Islamic mufti of Jerusalem who was closely aligned with Hitler and schemed from Berlin to import the Fuhrer's genocidal program to Palestine. Indeed, as the New York Sun observed in an editorial last week, one of el-Husseini's biographers relates that Arafat was a blood relative of the mufti, who preferred him to another up-and-comer, George Habash (al-Hakim), among the fiercest of Israel's Nasserite enemies who eventually founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a frequent Arafat ally.

Nevertheless, though he may have been a local gun-runner, the 19-year-old Arafat refrained from combat in 1948, when, upon Israel's declaration of independence, it was attacked by the Arab League (Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Iraq), which was defeated in the war still regarded by Palestinians and other Arabs as "al-Nakba" (the Catastrophe). Nor did he partake in the 1956 Suez War, although, as recounted last week by the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens, he later claimed to have done so.

Raising Terror
While Arafat's mantel as the "Father of Palestine" is dubious given that he is singularly responsible for the failure of a Palestinian nation to emerge, his credentials as the "Father of Modern Terrorism" are solid. In the late 1950's, he co-founded Fatah, the "Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine." His métier, and thus Fatah's, was the sneak attack on soft Israeli targets, the better to maximize carnage and fear. The first efforts were ham-handed: failed attempts in 1965 to bomb the national water carrier and the railroad. But the organization soon hit its stride, successfully attacking villages and civilian infrastructure. By 1969, Arafat was the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella group he never ceased to dominate after merging Fatah into it a year earlier. The PLO had a single purpose: the destruction of Israel.

Actually, make that two purposes. The PLO was also a fabulously profitable criminal enterprise. Though Arafat purported to have made it big in the engineering business in Kuwait, British investigators, as Stephens reported, concluded after a searching probe that his wealth stemmed from sidelines his organization maintained in "extortion, payoffs, illegal arms-dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud" that yielded billions. Throughout his career, moreover, Arafat proved a master at culling funds — whether from levies on strapped Palestinian workers or gushing subsidies from starry-eyed European and American governments. From these, he skimmed millions and stashed them throughout the world — including in Israeli banks — keeping his wife on a lavish $100,000-per-month allowance in Paris while his people starved, and, of course, blamed Israel for their troubles.

By the late 1960s, the PLO had set up shop in Jordan, wreaking havoc in the kingdom. Arafat and his affiliates soon became innovators in a tactic later refined by al Qaeda: the civilian airliner as terror weapon. On February 21, 1970, the PFLP — by then also under the PLO arch — bombed SwissAir Flight 330 enroute to Tel Aviv, murdering 47 passengers and crew. Eight months later, on September 6, they attempted a spectacular atrocity: a quadruple hijack, which now appears an eerie harbinger of the tectonic bin Laden operation on another September day 31 years later.

As recalled in the riveting account of "Black September" by hostage David Raab, all the hijacked flights were bound from Europe to the United States. One, a Pan-Am 747, was taken to Cairo, where it was blown up on the tarmac just after the passengers were allowed to exit. A second, targeting an El-Al aircraft, was foiled in flight by Israeli sky marshals. But a TWA 707 and a SwissAir DC-8, with a combined 310 passengers and crew, were hijacked to a Jordanian dessert. The terrorists segregated Israeli, American, Swiss, and West German passengers for captivity — releasing the others — and threatened to kill the hostages and blow up the planes unless jailed militants were released. Under international pressure, King Hussein resolved to reassert control. War broke out on September 13. By the time it ended two weeks later, the hostages had been released, but over 2,000 people had been killed as Arafat and his terrorist band were driven out of the country.

In the first of his many rises from the ashes, Arafat relocated to Lebanon. Staging from there, the PLO embarked, almost exactly a year to the day later, on another of the late 20th century's most infamous murder sprees. On September 5, in the midst of the Munich Summer Olympic Games of 1972, eight PLO operatives (a wing of Arafat's Fatah group known as the "Black September" brigade) carried out a plan that enabled five of them to steal into the Olympic village, quickly murder two members of the Israeli team (the wrestling coach and a weightlifter), and take nine other Israeli athletes hostage. The terrorists demanded the release of 200 Arab prisoners and safe passage back to the Middle East. German authorities lured them, with their captives, to the airport, but a rescue attempt was badly botched. In the resulting battle, the Palestinians killed all nine Israeli athletes by grenade and gunfire, as well as murdering a German policeman. Five of the terrorists were killed in the struggle, but German authorities managed to capture the remaining three. True to form, Arafat's organization responded the following month by hijacking a Lufthansa jet and taking the passengers hostage. The Germans capitulated, releasing the killers.

Arafat, meanwhile, also kept Israel's support network, the U.S., in his sights. On March 1, 1973, another eight-member Black September cell raided the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, taking as captives two American government officials, Ambassador Cleo Noel and the Charge d'Affaires George Curtis Moore, as well as a Belgian diplomat named Guy Eid. The terrorists demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan in California (jailed for the 1968 slaying of Robert F. Kennedy), of Palestinians imprisoned in Jordan (including Black September's own Abu Daoud, who later claimed to be the master-planner of the Munich Olympics massacre), and of Palestinian women jailed in Israel. When they were rebuffed, the terrorists murdered Noel, Moore, and Eid, and then anxiously surrendered to the Sudanese authorities.

These murders, theoretically an act of war against the U.S., were never "solved" in the sense of convicting the man ultimately responsible. The FBI was reported to have reopened an investigation of them earlier this year, and at least one State Department spokesman has strangely claimed the link between Arafat and Black September was never conclusively established — even as he acknowledged Black September's membership in Arafat's own Fatah faction.

Nonetheless, a number of Israeli and American intelligence officials have long maintained that Arafat personally ordered the killings by issuing a radio message, to wit: "Why are you waiting? The people's blood in the Cold River cries for vengeance" — Cold River reportedly being a predetermined code directing the executions. Furthermore, in the kangaroo court that passed for a Sudanese prosecution, one of the terrorists, Salim Rizak, testified: "We carried out this operation on the orders of the Palestine Liberation Organization"; while another witness, the Sudanese official who conducted interrogations, reported that the killers had taken their cues from radio messages emanating from Fatah headquarters in Beirut. Thus abound dark suspicions, not to mention an explicit allegation by former NSA official James J. Welsh, that Arafat's complicity was shunted aside for what was perversely perceived as the greater good of diplomatically cultivating him. Meanwhile, of the eight surrendering Black September terrorists, two were released immediately by the Sudanese due to purportedly insufficient evidence, while the remaining six were convicted, sentenced to life-imprisonment, and...released the very next day to the open arms of the PLO.

From his Lebanese perch, Arafat's rampage of Israel continued apace. On April 11, 1974, the PLO slaughtered eighteen residents of Kiryat Shmona in their apartment building. A month later, on May 15, Palestinian terrorists attacked a school in Ma'alot, murdering 26 Israelis, including several children. Then, in June, the PLO — through the "Palestinian National Council" — endorsed what it called a "phased plan" to obliterate Israel.

Weak-Kneed Appeasement
Seven years earlier, of course, Egypt, joined by Syria and Jordan, had foolishly launched yet another war of aggression against Israel. They were routed in the Six Day War of June 1967, at the end of which Israel's territorial holdings had drastically swelled to include the West Bank and East Jerusalem (taken from Jordan), the Suez and Gaza (from Egypt), and the Golan Heights (from Syria). It was understood that this expansion would not be permanent — in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Israel agreed eventually to withdraw from some undetermined portion of these territories in exchange for peace treaties that settled borders and acknowledged Israel's right to exist. In Arafat's 1974 phased plan, however, the PLO reaffirmed its rejection of Resolution 242 and committed itself to establish, in any ceded territory, a Palestinian state that would work toward Israel's destruction.

Adumbrating the global strategy for dealing with terror that would reign supreme through the quarter century leading up to the 9/11 attacks, the world reacted to Arafat's contemptuous belligerence with weak-kneed appeasement. The PLO was rewarded with observer status in the U.N., and on November 13, 1974, a triumphant and utterly unrepentant Arafat, holster strapped to his hip, addressed the General Assembly in New York City. By 1980, the European Economic Community recognized him as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people.

Not that there weren't setbacks. In 1979, Israel had struck a historic peace deal with Egypt in which it agreed to a phased pull-out from the Sinai (completed in 1982) and acknowledged that there should eventually be some form of autonomy for the Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza. With its southern flank calmed, Israel wearied of continuing missile attacks and other sorties launched against its northern communities from the PLO's Lebanese stronghold. Israel invaded in 1982, inducing Arafat to flee to Tunis.

From Killing Klinghoffer to "Nobel" Star
The PLO's bloodlust did not abate. In 1985, a cell identifying itself as the Palestine Liberation Front, led by Mohammed Abu al-Abbas, hijacked the Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro. As his horrified wife looked on, the terrorists viciously shot a 69-year-old, wheelchair-bound Jew named Leon Klinghoffer, then tossed him overboard to die in the sea. Despite indications that the PLF was acting on instructions from PLO headquarters in Tunis, a State Department spokesman incredibly contended as late as 2002 that the PLF had been a renegade group broken off from the PFLP, and that Arafat was probably blameless in the Achille Lauro operation. But, aside from the fact that the PLO's website (for its U.N. mission) listed the PLF as one of its constituents, Abbas had actually been a member of Arafat's own PLO Executive Committee. More to the point, when Abbas died last year in Iraq (where he had been harbored by Arafat's staunch ally, Saddam Hussein), Arafat issued an official statement lavishly praising him as a "martyr leader" and "a distinguished fighter and a national leader who devoted his life to serve his own people and his homeland."

Not long after Achille Lauro, Arafat began in 1987 to blaze the path that, by the mid-1990's, sickeningly transformed him into a regular White House guest and a Nobel Laureate. As was his Orwellian wont, he started on the road to faux respectability with a terrorist barrage that became known as the First Intifada. (With Arafat, it had to be the First Intifada because there would, of course, be a Second.)

The siege was ignited by two unconnected events in the powder keg of Gaza: the December 6 murder of an Israeli, followed quickly by the tragic December 10 death of four Palestinians in a car accident which was falsely, but unrelentingly, hyped as a revenge killing. Skirmishes quickly broke out in Gaza, and careened through the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The violence, a roller-coaster of lulls and explosions, lasted over six years. In the first four years — that is, the period before the ebb that marked the onset of the 1991 Gulf War — Israeli defense forces responded to more than 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks, and 600 assaults with guns or explosives, all of which killed 27 and wounded over 3000. Although the PLO was rivaled in the operation by militant Islamic groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Arafat's group dominated the so-called "Unified Leadership of the Intifada," using leaflets to direct the days and targets of attacks.

Israelis were not alone among the terror casualties. Arafat unleashed PLO death squads to kill numerous Arabs who were deemed to be collaborating with the enemy. In 1990, the Arabic publication Al-Mussawar reported Arafat's defense of the tactic: "We have studied the files of those who were executed, and found that only two of the 118 who were executed were innocent." As for those putative innocents, Arafat sloughed them off as "martyrs of the Palestinian revolution."

Even as the violence hummed, Arafat assumed his statesman's face for the West, to great effect. As the body count mounted in 1988, the U.N. granted the PLO's observer mission the right to participate, though not vote, in General Assembly sessions. In addition, the administration of George H. W. Bush held open the possibility of direct dialogue if Arafat would renounce terrorism and agree to be bound by Resolution 242. This he purported to do on December 16, 1988, claiming to acknowledge "the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to exist in peace and security...including the state of Palestine and Israel and other neighbors according to the Resolutions 242 and 338"; and asserting: "As for terrorism...I repeat for the record that we totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism, including individual, group and state terrorism." Like the Europeans, the U.S. officially recognized Arafat as the legitimate leader of the Palestinians.

The bankruptcy of these claims was revealed as the Intifada ensued and Arafat blundered by publicly aligning with Saddam both after the invasion of Kuwait and throughout Iraq's scud missile attacks on Israel. But just as it seemed he might finally fade away, the strongman caught a lifeline when Gulf War victory failed to carry the first President Bush to re-election. Bush's successor, President Bill Clinton, saw in the intractable Israeli/Palestinian conflict the chance for an enduring legacy, and saw in Arafat a viable "peace partner."

With Clinton as determined midwife, Arafat and the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the ballyhooed Oslo Accords of 1993. The Palestinian Authority was created, Arafat was appointed its chief executive, and a plan for eventual self-government by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza was set in motion. But euphoria over this seeming breakthrough blurred appreciation of both Arafat's innate mendacity and Oslo's patent failure to resolve key contentious issues, including final borders, the status of East Jerusalem, and the rights of Israeli settlers and Palestinian refugees — under the delusion that Arafat would work in good faith toward a peaceful, comprehensive settlement with Israel over a five-year period.

The mega-murderer was suddenly statesman, star, and, in 1994, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — a once-coveted honor now, by his attainment of it, reduced to a joke best listed among his countless victims. Thanks to this peace partner, it soon became clear that Oslo was a charade, a case of a credulous American president choosing his honey over his lying eyes.

The Palestinian Authority reneged on its promises of democratic reform and establishment of the rule of law — holding elections exactly once and never again after Arafat was overwhelmingly elected. Arafat also failed to honor, despite incessant pleading by Clinton administration figures, a commitment that the Palestinian National Charter would be amended to remove clauses calling for the destruction of Israel. The PA made a show of appearing to comply, disingenuously noting the provisions purportedly slated for nullification and calling for a new draft of the Charter to be produced. No revised Charter, however, was ever forthcoming. Meanwhile, what education system existed in the territories, much like Arafat's public statements in Arabic (always far more menacing than the English he spoke to the Western world), continued to instill hatred for Jews and calls for the demise of their state. Naturally, the terrorist activity also proceeded, with the PA ineffectual in halting it — when not encouraging it outright.

There should have been surprise in none of this. As Stephens reports, in 1996, Arafat brayed to an Arab audience in Stockholm, "We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion.... We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem." Asked about his plans on Egyptian television in 1998, Arafat explained that strategic pause was a venerable Islamic strategy, referring specifically to the "Khudaibiya agreement" in which the Prophet Mohammed made a ten-year treaty with the Arabian tribe of Koreish, but broke it after two years — during which his forces used the security of the pact to marshal their strength — and then conquered the Koreish tribe.

Such machinations were certainly no secret to the governments and media in the U.S., Europe and Israel itself. They knew precisely who Yasser Arafat was. But politically and culturally, hopeful hearts and good intentions were for them more essential than results on the ground — the "process" always took precedence over the "peace." Thus, in the Wye River Accords of 1998, the Clinton administration and Israel, now led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, took the terrorist at his word when he promised, yet again, to crack down on terror, this time in exchange for a pull back of Israeli forces (which had entered the territories in response to terror attacks), the ceding of additional territory to PA control, and even the release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners — many of whom had been incarcerated for terrorism offenses.

14 9/11s
The violence never stopped. Yet, with his presidency winding down in 2000 and desperate for an accomplishment that might balance a record besmirched by scandal, President Clinton boldly sought a final time to forge a comprehensive settlement. He brought Arafat and yet another new Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, to Camp David. Under intense U.S. pressure, Israel offered the creation of a Palestinian state over 90 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza, with its capital to be in East Jerusalem. In a move comprehensible only if one accepts that Arafat was incorrigibly devoted to Israel's extermination — in which case, it was entirely comprehensible — Arafat rejected this stunning offer, with poison-pill insistence that millions of Palestinians be accorded a right of return to Israel.

The breakdown of negotiations resulted, like night followed day with Arafat, in a new round of terror: the Second Intifada, which continues to this day. This program has been pursued mostly by suicide bombings — often including explosives strapped to children encouraged by the culture of shahada, or martyrdom, which thrived under Arafat's corrupt and dysfunctional leadership. In the main, attacks have willfully targeted civilians in busses, restaurants, shopping centers, synagogues, hotels and other public centers. Since 2000, approximately 900 Israelis, three quarters of whom were civilians, have been murdered. To extrapolate to American proportions, for a country the size of Israel this is the rough equivalent of over 40,000 dead — or, as the Hudson Institute's Anne Bayefsky has calculated, about 14 9/11s.

Arafat's world, like everyone else's, radically changed on September 11, 2001. The Bush Doctrine, announcing a commitment to eradicate terrorists and terror supporting governments, did not immediately spell the end for the Palestinian strongman. He was, however, gradually marginalized and reduced to pariah status — but for the markedly less frequent, and ineffectual, paeans from Europe, the Islamic world and the U.N.

The magic began to fail even his most trusted old tricks. For example, on December 16, 2001, with American forces suppressing terrorists in Afghanistan, an ostensibly chastened Arafat appeared on PA-controlled Palestinian television to warn Hamas and Islamic Jihad against "all military activities" against Israel, and to purportedly "renew" his "call to completely halt any activities, especially suicide attacks, which we have condemned and always condemned." This time, the ploy fell flat — undercut, no doubt, after the Nobel laureate characteristically followed it up only two days later with a speech at a Ramallah rally — the kind of red meat always conveniently ignored in the halcyon pre-9/11 days. "With God's help," he boasted:

next time we will meet in Jerusalem, because we are fighting to bring victory to our prophets, every baby, every kid, every man, every woman and every old person and all the young people, we will all sacrifice ourselves for our holy places and we will strengthen our hold of them and we are willing to give 70 of our martyrs for every one of theirs in this campaign, because this is our holy land. We will continue to fight for this blessed land and I call on you to stand strong.

The jig was up. Arafat's celebrity might be a product of the "international community" but his relevance was strictly made-in-the-USA, and America was no longer buying. The administration of President George W. Bush let it be known that Arafat would no longer be dealt with. When the president eventually proposed his "roadmap" to resume negotiations toward an eventual Palestinian state, he snubbed Arafat and made unconditional cessation of all Palestinian terrorism a nonnegotiable prerequisite. Critically, the administration also eased the restraints that had for decades compelled Israel to accord its sworn enemy so wide a berth.

Now under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel responded forcefully to the terror onslaught, including through high-profile "targeted assassinations" of Hamas leaders. Its forces tightened the noose around Arafat. Unable to leave his squalid Ramallah compound with any assurance that he'd either survive or be permitted to return, the "president" of what was more a racket than a government — and decidedly not a nation — remained holed up there for over two years until his evacuation to Paris, in extremis, in late October. There he died on Wednesday, one of history's most repulsive conmen and killers.

"The power of bad men," Burke famously observed, "is no indifferent thing." The power of this evil man informed an age — the age of terrorism. The Israelis and Palestinians may never coexist peacefully, but as long as Yasser Arafat lived they didn't even have a chance.

— Andrew C. McCarthy

 

[Arwin]

I once again applaud you for posting an article that is so single minded and propagandistic it makes my head spin. Do you lack so much a sense of critical reading that you would even think about sharing an article like this one? It's truly stunning. Of course it's not that all facts in this article are wrong, it's just that they are presented exactly like we have recently seen in form of a twisted CV of a certain recently reelected U.S. president. Except that it contains more blatent speculation and omissions.

I will be the last to claim that Arafat has done the best job in the world in the last 20 years of his leadership, but the kind of article we read here is the kind of article that gave the British press its current high standing in the world of journalism.

As one very simple example of how this article works, take the omission of Rabin's murder by an Orthodox Jew and the effect this had on the readiness of Israel to accept any kind of peace agreement. But there are so many other 'red flags' in this article (AIDS, sneer to Clinton, use of 'colored' language), and it doesn't even have the decency to at least try to come across like it has looked at the facts subjectively and from both sides.

(I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with the name McCarthy - I've seen this exact same kind of propagandistic nonsense before, coming from a certain, I think it was a general)

I bet we can easily find a decent piece of journalism that might still not praise Arafat into the sky, but at least does history some justice.

 

[Arwin]

There you go:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/arafatobit.html

 

[emad]

could you copy and paste the article? Most of us can't be arsed to sign up to a site that we'll more than likely never go to again.

 

[Carl.]

It is 8 pages long:

Yasir Arafat, Father and Leader of Palestinian Nationalism, Dies at 75
[size=-1]By JUDITH MILLER[/size]

Published: November 11, 2004
Correction Appended

Yasir Arafat, who died this morning in Paris, was the wily and enigmatic father of Palestinian nationalism who for almost 40 years symbolized his people's longing for a distinct political identity and independent state. He was 75.

No other individual so embodied the Palestinians' plight: their dispersal, their statelessness, their hunger for a return to a homeland lost to Israel. Mr. Arafat was once seen as a romantic hero and praised as a statesman, but his luster and reputation faded over time. A brilliant navigator of political currents in opposition, once in power he proved more tactician than strategist, and a leader who rejected crucial opportunities to achieve his declared goal.

At the end of his life, Mr. Arafat governed Palestinians from an almost three-year confinement by Israel to his Ramallah headquarters. While many Palestinians continued to revere him, others came to see him as undemocratic and his administration as corrupt, as they faced growing poverty, lawlessness and despair over prospects for statehood.

A co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994 for his agreement to work toward peaceful coexistence with Israel, Mr. Arafat began his long political career with high-profile acts of anti-Israel terrorism.

In the 1960's, he pioneered what became known as "television terrorism" - air piracy and innovative forms of mayhem staged for maximum propaganda value. Among the more spectacular deeds he ordered was the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In 1986, a group linked to Mr. Arafat but apparently acting independently seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship and threw overboard an elderly American Jew in a wheelchair.

In 2000, after rejecting a land-for-peace deal from Israel that he considered insufficient, Mr. Arafat presided over the Palestinians as they waged a mix of guerrilla warfare and terror against Israeli troops and civilians that has lasted more than four years.

Indeed, shifting between peace talks and acts of violence was the defining feature of his political life. In his emotional appeal for a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, he wore a holster while waving an olive branch. After his pledge of peace with Israel in 1993, Palestinians associated with him carried out suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He officially condemned such violence but called for "martyrs by the millions" to rise for the Palestinian cause.

Mr. Arafat assumed many poses. But the image that endures - and the one he clearly relished - was that of the Arab fighter, the grizzled, scruffy-bearded guerrilla in olive-green military fatigues and his trademark checkered head scarf, carefully folded in the elongated diamond shape of what was once Palestine.

He seemed to thrive when under siege. Surrounded in the spring of 2002 by Israeli tanks in two rooms of his compound in Ramallah, he cried out, "Oh God, grant me a martyr's death."

Until 1988, he repeatedly rejected recognition of Israel, insisting on armed struggle and terror campaigns. He opted for diplomacy only after his embrace of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 - and the collapse of the Soviet Union - left his movement politically disgraced and financially bankrupt, with neither power nor leverage.

In September 1993, he achieved world acclaim by signing a limited peace treaty with Israel, a declaration of principles that provided for mutual recognition and outlined a transition to Palestinian autonomy in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories that Israel had controlled since its decisive victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The culmination of secret negotiations in Oslo, the agreement was blessed by President Bill Clinton and sealed with a stunning handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Mr. Arafat on the White House lawn.

But in 2000, he walked away from a proffered settlement based on the Oslo accords proposed by Prime Minister Ehud Barak - the biggest compromises Israel had ever offered.

- 2 -
The Israeli proposal appeared to meet most of his earlier demands, but Mr. Arafat held out for more. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Barak charged that Mr. Arafat had failed to respond with proposals of his own, effectively torpedoing the American-brokered talks. The Palestinians had a different interpretation, saying that despite being pushed into negotiations before they were ready, they had nonetheless responded with counterproposals but that the Barak offers kept shifting and ultimately fell short of their needs.

After the talks collapsed in 2000, Ariel Sharon, then in the opposition in Israel, visited the Jerusalem plaza outside Al Aksa Mosque in late September. Palestinians erupted in violent protest, igniting what came to be called the second intifada. That campaign has killed more than 900 Israelis and almost 3,000 Palestinians, and plunged the fragile Palestinian Authority into armed conflict.

Mr. Arafat died without achieving any of the essential goals he had espoused at various stages of his career: the destruction of Israel, the peace with the Jewish state he backed after 1988, or the creation of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Moreover, the political concessions that produced the 1993 Oslo accords - accords for which he, Mr. Rabin and Shimon Peres of Israel shared the Nobel Peace Prize - deepened both the admiration and hatred of him. Few Arabs or Israelis were neutral about Mr. Arafat or his Oslo deal with Israel.

Mr. Arafat leaves an ambiguous legacy. He succeeded in creating not only a coherent national movement, led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, but also the very consciousness that made it possible. A master of public relations, he made the world aware of Palestine as a distinct entity. And he helped persuade Palestinians, who now number five million to six million, to think of themselves as a people with a right to sovereignty. "He put the Palestinian cause on the map and mobilized behind his leadership the broadest cross section imaginable of Palestinians," said Khalil E. Jahshan, an Arab-American political activist who knew him well for more than a decade.

His detractors, however, grew more numerous over time. Mr. Arafat, those critics contended, betrayed the Palestinian and Arab cause to maintain his own power. They called him a traitor for having accepted what Hisham Sharabi, the Palestinian scholar and former supporter, called an Arab Bantustan, an entity that was neither politically coherent nor economically viable. Critics noted that while "President Arafat" toured the globe being welcomed by world leaders, Israel doubled the size of its settlements on what was envisioned as soil for a future Palestinian state.

Other detractors argued that he had waited too long to accept political reality. His reluctance to recognize Israel's existence and renounce the violence that claimed hundreds of Israeli and other lives prolonged the pain of the Palestinians and left a new generation stateless, ill treated under Israeli occupation and by most Arab governments. Palestinians in many Arab countries, including Syria and Lebanon, were restricted to camps and denied citizenship, while their host governments spoke in heartfelt tones of the Palestinian cause.

Both admirers and enemies agreed that like King Hussein of Jordan, his late longtime rival and eventual partner in peace with Israel, Mr. Arafat was a survivor. Having experienced perhaps 40 attempts on his life by Israelis and Arabs, he was strengthened as a revolutionary leader by single-mindedness in pursuit of his dream and uncanny energy. Yet after Oslo, his enemies said he continued living mainly because Israel permitted him to do so.

Until 1991, when he wed Suha Tawil, his Palestinian secretary, and had a daughter, Zahwa, he was married only to his cause. He slept and ate little, took no vacations and neither drank nor smoked. People viewed his role in various ways - terrorist, statesman, dreamer, pragmatist, his people's warrior, his people's peacemaker. Even admirers described him as a chameleon. Virtually all the biographies about him express bewilderment about his actions and character, about what an Israeli author, Danny Rubinstein, in his book "The Mystery of Arafat," called "this strange phenomenon."

-3-
Many Palestinians compared him to David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founder and first leader, seeing Mr. Arafat as an Arab pioneer who struggled to lead his people back to their promised land. Many Israelis, by contrast, regarded him as an archterrorist, an opportunist who endorsed peace merely as a tactic to destroy Israel - "a beast on two legs," as the late Israeli leader Menachem Begin once called him.

After the Oslo accords, Mr. Arafat became as controversial among Arabs, especially Palestinians: revered by many as the father of their country, reviled by others as an autocrat, a divisive and sometimes indecisive buffoon, a traitor. Even many Arab supporters of his 1993 agreements with Israel eventually came to loathe him for what they saw as his political duplicity, his administration's endemic corruption and his dictatorial tendencies.

An exasperating and mercurial man, Mr. Arafat, with his ever-present silver-plated .357 Magnum, was one of the most recognizable of world figures. He was known by many names: Abu Ammar, his nom de guerre; the "chairman," after he became leader of the P.L.O. in 1969; and the "old man," the name he once said he preferred because in Arabic it conjures an image of a beloved uncle. At the end of his life, he referred to himself as "general," often speaking of himself in the third person.

Over the years, "old man" became apt. His once-taut stomach gave way with age to paunch despite his frequent walks and the treadmill behind his office. What remained of his hair, almost always hidden by his trademark head scarf, turned gray. The face, with its three-day stubble, became visibly lined, his eyes weary.

The Young Guerrilla

The mystery surrounding Mr. Arafat starts early, as accounts of his origins vary. The man who became "Mr. Palestine" was probably not born there. He has claimed to have been born on Aug. 4, 1929, in Jerusalem, or alternatively in Gaza. What seems certain is that this son of a lower-middle-class merchant spent much of his childhood being shuttled among relatives in Cairo, Gaza and Jerusalem after his mother, who came from a prominent Jerusalem family, died when he was 4.

In 1949, he began studying engineering at Cairo University, where he was prominent in Palestinian student affairs. When Israel, Britain and France invaded Egypt in 1956, Mr. Arafat, as an Egyptian military reservist, is said to have taken a course in which he learned how to use mines and explosives, skills that proved useful. That same year, he also began wearing his trademark kaffiyeh, which impressed both Arabs and Westerners when he first traveled to Europe in a Palestinian student delegation.

After graduating, he worked as an engineer in Egypt and moved first to Saudi Arabia, then to Kuwait in 1957, where he plunged into clandestine Palestinian nationalist activities.

In October 1959, he and four other Palestinians founded Al Fatah, "the Conquest," which later became the core of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

From the beginning, Mr. Arafat was intent on building a revolutionary organization with three hallmarks: unity, independence and relevance. He knew that all three were essential to prevent the Arab nations, torn by bitter rivalries, from exploiting the Palestinian cause for their own purposes. He spent brief stints in prison in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

In May 1964, Egypt created the P.L.O. under Arab League auspices, but only as a front for the Arab nations. Ahmed Shukairy, an Egyptian bureaucrat who headed the P.L.O. and had never held a gun, resented Mr. Arafat and Al Fatah, denouncing them as "enemies" of the liberation movement.

The 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which brought humiliating defeat to the Arabs' conventional armies, gave Mr. Arafat's group a chance to become heroes to Arabs desperately in need of some. But it still took Mr. Arafat two years to wrest control of the P.L.O. from the lower-key Palestinians to whom the Arab states had entrusted it.

His genius for attracting media attention became evident in the spring of 1968, when he made his first appearance on the cover of Time magazine.

-4-
That March, the Israeli Army attacked Karameh, the Jordanian town east of the Jordan River where Al Fatah had set up headquarters. Mr. Arafat insisted that his commandos not retreat. After the Israelis withdrew, he staged a victory celebration around several destroyed Israeli tanks that was attended by representatives from many Arab countries and, of course, the news media.

Calling Karameh "the first victory of the Arabs against the state of Israel," Mr. Arafat, with his kaffiyeh and Kalashnikov, became an instant sensation and a leading spokesman for the Palestinian cause. Money and volunteers poured in. Guerrilla training camps sprang up in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, and Al Fatah became paramount among Palestinian guerrilla groups.

At the same time, wrote Abu Iyad, a late top aide to Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian National Council, the P.L.O.'s parliamentary body, adopted Al Fatah's goal: "Creating a democratic society in Palestine where Muslims, Christians and Jews would live together in complete equality."

Though such a state would have meant the destruction of Israel, Mr. Arafat and other Palestinians kept openly advocating it until the early 1980's.

The Evicted Guest

The guerrillas' power grew steadily in Jordan, to which 380,000 Palestinians had fled after Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, joining others who had arrived in 1948 when Israel was founded. By 1970, thousands of guerrillas were there, many of them adherents of Al Fatah.

Spurred on by Palestinian radicals, Mr. Arafat committed what was to be the first of several blunders: he countenanced an attempt to wrest power from King Hussein, whose grandfather, a religious and tribal leader from Saudi Arabia, had been placed in charge of the country when Britain recognized its independence in 1923.

Palestinian guerrillas began interfering with highway traffic, controlling Palestinian refugee camps, clashing with the Jordanian Army and systematically defying the Jordanian government. In September 1970 - later known to Palestinians as Black September - King Hussein sent troops and armor into Amman, his capital, to suppress the P.L.O. After days of shelling refugee camps where some 60,000 Palestinians lived, the army drove the would-be usurpers out of Jordan into Lebanon.

Conservative estimates put Palestinian losses at 2,000. Mr. Arafat, who made his way unharmed to Cairo, later claimed that Jordan's Army had killed 25,000. By the following summer, the Jordanian Army had nullified the P.L.O. as a military power in the country. Sapped and shaken, the guerrilla movement drifted into Lebanon.

In Lebanon's atmosphere of banking secrecy, duty-free trade and political freedom, Al Fatah expanded its political and military institutions as never before. Working among some 400,000 Palestinians in the country, the P.L.O. built its own police force, clinics and hospitals, a research center and a network of business interests that made it a "virtual state within a state."

Moreover, it set about developing a formidable military arsenal.

By 1974, the P.L.O. became, in effect, the sole representative of the Palestinian people, and that November, Mr. Arafat became the first Palestinian leader to plead his people's cause before the General Assembly.

Mr. Arafat and his P.L.O. seemed at their peak, but as he had done in Jordan, he soon overplayed his hand. In 1975, tensions between Palestinians and Lebanese helped set off the Lebanese civil war. Despite some antagonism, he maintained his headquarters in Beirut for several years, and during this period armed Palestinians based in southern Lebanon harassed northern Israel.

Sensing an opportunity to rid itself of Mr. Arafat and his movement, Israel invaded Lebanon and laid siege to Beirut in 1982. General Sharon, who later complained that he should have killed Mr. Arafat in Lebanon when he had the chance, dealt the Palestinians heavy blows before an agreement sponsored by Washington led to the withdrawal of thousands of P.L.O. guerrillas in August 1982. The guerrillas scattered to eight Arab cities, with their leaders fleeing to Tunis, the new Palestinian headquarters.

-5-
Mr. Arafat ventured back to Lebanon in 1983. But rebel Palestinian guerrillas backed by Syria challenged and besieged him and his commandos in northern Lebanon. After a six-week siege in December, the anti-Arafat Palestinians drove him out.

Thus Mr. Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization lost a base of military operations near Israel, as well as a sense of unity. And in moving to Tunis, a political backwater, he also jeopardized his organization's relevance in any peace talks.

The Pragmatic Survivor

Mr. Arafat still managed to stage a limited revival. Traveling incessantly in Arab countries, he refilled his organization's depleted coffers and commanded world attention, especially when he escaped death in 1985 in an Israeli attack on his compound.

But weakened and increasingly on the margins of Arab politics, he and the P.L.O. leaders gradually became convinced that political survival demanded a shift in both propaganda and tactical courses.

The man who had vowed in 1969 to ignite "armed revolution in all parts of our Palestinian territory" in order "to make of it a war of liberation" against Israel, realized that while he had exhorted and overseen many armed actions against Israel, the terrorism had never amounted to a war of liberation. He and his advisers became increasingly convinced that Israel could not be vanquished by force.

Moreover, the cold war was ending; the Soviet Union, a crucial patron, was broke and uninterested in his cause. The only Arab nation that had succeeded in reclaiming land lost to Israel was Egypt, whose president, Anwar el-Sadat, had been denounced by Mr. Arafat as an American "stooge." Increasingly, however, the United States seemed like the only power that could press Israel to make political concessions.

The outbreak of the intifada, the Palestinian uprising that erupted without the P.L.O.'s approval or encouragement in the Israeli-occupied territories in late 1987, also pushed Mr. Arafat toward greater pragmatism, if not moderation.

In November 1988, after considerable American prodding, the P.L.O. accepted the United Nations resolution that called for recognition of Israel and a renunciation of terrorism.

Yet this achievement was soon eclipsed by yet another miscalculation: Mr. Arafat's support for President Hussein in the Persian Gulf war enraged his remaining wealthy Arab patrons. The Persian Gulf states and other backers cut off at least $100 million in annual support, and the P.L.O. became even more isolated.

Mr. Arafat, however, did not see it that way, and later claimed that he had not sided with the Iraqi dictator. In an interview in Tunis soon after the gulf war, he insisted that the P.L.O. was at its "peak" and that he was "more popular than ever before" with the "Arab masses, the Muslim nation, the third world."

But with his coffers bare and Palestinians increasingly calling for his ouster, he had little choice but to grab the lifeline of peace talks that Israel had thrown him. Though Prime Minister Rabin was initially reluctant to engage the P.L.O. in secret peace talks, his fear of the growing power of Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamic movement that had taken hold under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, was stronger than his disdain for Mr. Arafat and his bedraggled guerrillas.

Mr. Arafat endorsed the Arab-Israeli peace talks that began in Madrid in October 1991, with Palestinians (but not the P.L.O.) taking part. The Arab participants sought a settlement under which Israel would yield land it occupied. Concurrently, in early 1992, secret contacts between representatives of the P.L.O. and Israel got under way in Tel Aviv. The talks continued, at Oslo and other sites, and by early September 1993, the essence of the proposed pact was generally known: mutual recognition and the creation of self-rule areas in Gaza and Jericho, with that autonomy envisioned as the beginning of a larger transfer of authority to the Palestinians in the occupied lands.

The Oslo peace accords of 1993 were the first between Israeli officials and the P.L.O., and many Palestinians and Israelis argue that with the organization and even his own Fatah so divided about the accords, only Mr. Arafat could have secured their approval.

-6-

But many diplomats and scholars say he could have secured a better deal for the Palestinians much earlier had he not placed priority on his organization's survival and unity rather than on establishing autonomy and a state on any sliver of his people's original land that he could secure.
In 1978, Mr. Arafat joined most Arab nations in rejecting Mr. Sadat's peace with Israel under the Camp David accords. But unlike the others, Jordan and the P.L.O. had something to gain by taking part. The accords provided for an end to Israeli occupation of vast sections of the West Bank and Gaza and for "autonomy" for the Palestinians there, the possibility of eventually establishing the kind of national autonomy the P.L.O. had been seeking since 1974.

William B. Quandt, a scholar and former American official who was intimately involved in Israeli-Arab diplomacy for years, said even the Camp David accords would probably have provided a better deal than the one Mr. Arafat ultimately accepted in 1993. "In 1975 there were only 10,000 Israelis on the West Bank," he said. Today, there are 225,000 in the West Bank and 200,000 more Jews in East Jerusalem.

Some of Mr. Arafat's most euphoric and frustrating moments occurred after the 1993 Oslo accords. Among the highlights was his triumphal return to Gaza in July 1994. Welcomed by tens of thousands of cheering Palestinians and a city bedecked with the red, green, black and white colors of the Palestinian flag, he established the first Palestinian government.

The assassination of Mr. Rabin by a Jewish hard-liner in November 1995 was a personal and political blow to Mr. Arafat, according to several associates, including Edward G. Abington, the American consul general in Jerusalem until mid-1997. Mr. Abington said Mr. Arafat "broke down and sobbed over the phone" after learning that Mr. Rabin had been assassinated.

But in January 1996, the Palestinian leader presided over one of the freest elections ever held among Arabs. Some 85 percent of the Palestinian electorate chose from a bewildering array of 700 candidates for an 88-member Palestinian Council.

With 88 percent of the vote for him as president, Mr. Arafat became the undisputed leader of his people - no longer (or so it seemed) dismissible by Israelis as a terrorist who derived his authority from the gun, or by Islamic nationalists who had assailed him as the hand-picked collaborator of Israel and the United States. "This is a new era," he said after the 1996 elections. "This is the foundation of our Palestinian state."

The Criticized Symbol

Such optimism proved short-lived. The Palestinian Authority was soon locked in increasingly bitter struggles with Hamas, which insisted on the continuing need to stage terrorist attacks not only against Israeli soldiers and settlers in their midst, but also on civilians inside Israel.

Opposition to Mr. Arafat and his Oslo accords also increased among secular Palestinians. Some of the most rabid critics accused him of having betrayed the Palestinian cause.

Palestinians grew ever more critical of his autocratic style and what they called his inept stewardship, the brutal, arrogant methods of his 14 security services, his crackdown on dissenters and the corruption among the "outsiders" who had accompanied him from Tunis.

In Israel, opposition was also building to what Mr. Arafat had once called the "peace of the brave." After Mr. Rabin's assassination, a series of lethal suicide attacks by Hamas helped elect the hawkish government of Benjamin Netanyahu in May 1996.

Palestinian hopes for economic development were also repeatedly dashed, partly by punitive Israeli actions that denied Palestinians jobs in Israel and work at home. In 1996, the border with Gaza was sealed by Israel for 3 days of every 10. By 1997, three years after Mr. Arafat's triumphal return to Gaza, the Palestinian economy was stagnant and per-capita annual income in Gaza had declined by $100, to $1,050. Refugee camps remained mired in squalor.

-7-
Mr. Arafat's penchant for trying - once more - to satisfy all constituencies further undermined confidence in his leadership. Successive Palestinian crackdowns on Hamas and other militants invariably gave way to deals, pledges of forgiveness and rounds of kisses.

Still, Mr. Arafat presided over an autonomous Palestinian sector that was, relative to most Arab states, tolerant and politically free-wheeling. And his popularity prevailed relative to challengers.

Ever the careful balancer, he insisted on making decisions alone and in private. Indeed, he found himself increasingly isolated in his final years, with almost all his former close aides having been killed over the years by Israeli or Arab assassins.

Plagued by a neurological illness that doctors said stemmed from an airplane crash in the Libyan desert that nearly killed him in 1992, Mr. Arafat slowed down. No longer able to work his legendary 18-hour days, he was forced to delegate some power, if not real authority, as he grew ever more frail. His trembling lower lip and shaking hands increased Palestinian concerns about the future. He had not appointed or groomed an obvious successor.

Some Americans and Israelis involved in the Oslo peace negotiations continued to view him as the only Palestinian leader willing and able to make the compromises needed to end the bitter conflict. They disagreed with the growing number of Israelis who suspected that he secretly sought Israel's destruction while negotiating for peace.

This upbeat assessment, however, was challenged in Israeli and American eyes by the collapse of the Oslo talks at Camp David in July 2000 and a last ditch round of negotiations that continued despite growing violence until January 2001. The talks with Mr. Barak's Labor government failed despite the intervention of President Clinton, who offered Mr. Arafat an 11th-hour peace package to secure a final settlement before the end of his term in office and before Mr. Barak faced elections in February 2001.

The package would have given the Palestinians all of Gaza and more than 94 percent of the West Bank, much closer to Mr. Arafat's goal of securing the return of all the territories lost in 1967 than he had ever come before. The Israelis also agreed to give Palestinians full sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and air rights over Israel. But Mr. Arafat, who had already blessed the uprising and was facing growing Palestinian criticism of his stewardship, still insisted, among other things, on the right of return of refugees into Israel. Henry Siegman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, called Mr. Arafat's rejection of the American-brokered peace package a "disastrous mistake.'' But, he added, "based on my 14 years of dealings with Arafat, I reject the notion that he was bent on Israel's destruction." Rather, he said, Mr. Arafat's decision reflected his political weakness, a result partly of Israel's acceleration of settlement expansion and Mr. Barak's lack of interest in peace with the Palestinians until his own government began collapsing.

But Dennis B. Ross, who spent 12 years trying to negotiate an Arab-Israeli peace settlement in Republican and Democratic administrations, ultimately concluded that while Mr. Arafat might have been prepared to die with Israel in existence, he was not prepared to have history regard him as the man who betrayed the vision of a single Palestinian state. "In the end, he was not prepared to give up Palestinian claims and declare that the conflict is over," Mr. Ross said in an interview.

Even worse, Mr. Ross wrote in his book documenting the collapse of the American-brokered peace effort, "he continued to promote hostility toward Israel.'' To avoid potential opposition, he remained a "decision-avoider, not a decision-maker," Mr. Ross wrote, "all tactics and no strategy."

In the February 2001 elections, Mr. Barak lost to Mr. Sharon, the candidate of the conservative Likud Party and a figure hated by Palestinians for his invasion of Lebanon, his settlements policy and his September 2000 visit to the Jerusalem plaza outside Al Aksa Mosque, an act intended to demonstrate Israeli sovereignty over what Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary.

After Mr. Sharon's election, the newly elected Bush administration refused to help broker a serious peace effort similar to that of Oslo or the Madrid conference staged by the first President Bush. As a result, Palestinians argue, Mr. Arafat and others who ostensibly favored a diplomatic option lacked the political leverage they required.

-8-
Mr. Arafat's critics, by contrast, maintain that it was he who set off the violent Palestinian protests in September 2000, using the weapons and terrorist infrastructure he had secretly built alongside Israel while he negotiated for peace.

After almost 60 suicide bombings in 17 months, Mr. Sharon surrounded Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah in late March 2001 and later confined him there, leaving the Palestinian leader to rail against Jewish "extremists" as his cellphone battery died and his entourage ran short of food.

Pressure by Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies prompted the Bush administration to re-engage in an American-sponsored peace effort in the summer of 2001. Although Mr. Bush had been tentatively scheduled to meet Mr. Arafat on the periphery of the United Nations General Assembly in the fall of 2001, the session was canceled after the attacks of Sept. 11. Mr. Bush never met with Mr. Arafat.

The White House's hostility to the Palestinian leader hardened over time as American intelligence officials informed the White House that he was lying about his opposition to violence against Israelis. Officials said Mr. Bush came increasingly to equate Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians with militant Islamic attacks on Americans.

Mr. Ross, the longtime negotiator, said a low point came in January 2002, when Israelis interdicted in the Red Sea the Karine A, a ship carrying Iranian arms for use against Israelis. In a letter to Mr. Bush, Mr. Arafat disavowed any connection to the ship, though it turned out that the shipment had been arranged by a crucial Arafat aide, and the pilot was a Palestinian navy officer. Mr. Bush angrily dismissed the letter, insisting that Mr. Arafat must have known about the weapons. Though Mr. Arafat finally acknowledged responsibility for the arms, the diplomatic damage was done.

Increasingly, the United States looked on with indifference as Prime Minister Sharon took unilateral steps to protect Israelis that infuriated the Palestinians, including building walls to cut Israel off from suicide bombers and ordinary Palestinians, dividing up the West Bank into supposedly temporary zones of security and more permanent zones of settlement.

Efforts by the Bush administration to force Mr. Arafat to share power with other Palestinian leaders also failed. Because he steadfastly refused to designate a successor, a generation of lieutenants has been jockeying for power.

The International Crisis Group, an independent Brussels-based group that studies global issues, partly blamed the Palestinian leadership. "Recent power struggles, armed clashes, and demonstrations do not pit Palestinians against Israelis so much as Palestinians against each other,'' the report stated.

Under Mr. Arafat, local actors like mayors, kinship networks and armed militias competed for authority in the vacuum. One result, the report said, was growing chaos.

Nor did Mr. Arafat deliver prosperity. According to United Nations figures, 50 percent of the 2.2 million Palestinians on the West Bank live below the poverty line, compared with 22 percent in 2001; the figure is now 68 percent in teeming Gaza, with its 1.3 million residents.

Despite deteriorating political and economic conditions, many Palestinians blamed Israel and not their leader for their plight. For many, until the end, Mr. Arafat remained the symbol of Palestinian aspiration to a state, the only man who could have sold the painful compromises for peace to his people had he chosen to do so.



Correction: Nov. 13, 2004, Saturday

The obituary of Yasir Arafat in some late editions on Thursday referred incorrectly to the state of knowledge about his organizational role in the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. A group under his authority has long been blamed for the killings; it is not known whether Mr. Arafat personally ordered them. The article also misstated the year in which the cruise ship Achille Lauro was seized by terrorists loosely linked to Mr. Arafat's organization. It was 1985, not 1986.

 

[ledhed]

I dont get it. Whats wrong with pointing out that arafat was a TERRORIST ? He was also the acknowlaged leader of the Palestinians. Lets not forget what he had to do to get there.
He was a cold blooded killer willing to do whatever he had to do to advance his cause.
Lets not be fooling ourselves about it. The AIDS crap is irrelevant. What he did and ordered done in the name of the Palestinian cause is RELEVANT . Whats also relevant and telling is the FACT that he won the Nobel PEACE prize and was accepted around the world as the leader of the Palestinian people . DESPITE what he did . So what lessons are we to infer from the relaveant facts ? Sometimes terrorist are ok ? Its ok to terrorise when you get the Nobel prize ? Or terrorism is ok as long as you dont get attacked or attack the US ?
How about terrorism is ok if the UN recognizes you. Hmmm I'm confused.

 

[wheellift]

This Yasser Arafat (yessir Iarefat for you rednecks) is the guy who invented airplane hijackings.... the Godfather of Terrorism...

 

[Anderton Prime]

This Yasser Arafat (yessir Iarefat for you rednecks) is the guy who invented airplane hijackings.... the Godfather of Terrorism...

Anyone else want to take this? I've sworn an oath.

 

[emad]

sure It's a quickie and i wont have time for any debating whatsoever until late in december but hopefully this is enough for now...
Airplane hijackings have been around for a lot longer than Arafat has been considered a terrorist. Some of the original hijackings were done in the 60's and 70's by people from the western world who were after money - they were done much in the same way as bank robberies.

To call Arafat the godfather of terrorism is just crap. Terrorism has been around for about as long as there have been governments that people didn't agree with and for about as long as there have been people thinking that it should be their way or no way at all. (sorry if that came out oddly, i'm too tired to think even slightly clearly right now).

Just as an example, you've got these:

There were several ancient terrorist organizations. In early 1st century AD, a Jewish extremist group called the Sicari waged a war of terrorism in and around Jerusalem.(Laqueuer 11) The Sicari often Munich.jpeg (12982 bytes)murdered other Jews and moneylenders with small daggers. Occasionally the terrorists set houses and, at one time, a Herodian palace on fire. They were also knee-deep in the revolution of 66 AD. The Sicari are accused of being the cause of the loss of the Jewish state in 70 AD.(Laqueur 11) The Sicari was not the only ancient terrorist organization, though.

The Order of Assassins was another ancient terrorist faction. It was an extremist Muslim organization in the late 11th century.(Laqueur 11) The Order of Assassins began their operations in mountain fortresses, but later turned their attention to the urban Muslim world. Around the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries the Order of Assassins murdered a chief minister of the Sultan of Baghdad. The group operated in Persia, Syria, and Palestine.(Laqueur 11) Modern terrorism really sprang from these two groups.

source - http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/MidEast/04/alexander/alexander.htm

Anyways, i'm out - i've got way too many assignments and test dates over the next few weeks and i'm nowhere near prepared yet.

edit: for future reference, if anyone wants to make a claim like that, please go ahead - but back it with some credible evidence before you click the submit button. It causes waaaaaay too many flame wars when people post without backing whatever it is they're saying

 

[ledhed]

On September 17, 1948, four men dressed in Israeli Army uniforms assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, the man appointed by the United Nations to mediate the growing Arab-Jewish dispute. The four killers were never brought to justice.

Israel's founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, knew who the assassins were: members of the so-called Stern Gang, a Jewish terrorist group of several hundred members founded in 1940. Ben-Gurion made a behind-the-scenes deal with the murderers: freedom from prosecution if they would cease violence. The man who organized the killing of Count Bernadotte was Yitzhak Shamir, who later became Prime Minister himself.
Also we have;
On April 9, 1948--thus five months prior to the killing of Count Bernadotte-- the combined forces of the Stern Gang and the Irgun (military arm of the Revisionist party, commanded by Menachem Begin, later Prime Minister) carried out reprisals in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. Like the Stern Gang, the Irgun was responsible for many horrors; but Deir Yassin may have been the worst.

The villagers had actually signed a nonaggression pact with a nearby Jewish village when the Stern Gang decided to destroy Deir Yassin to teach the Arabs a lesson for over-running other Jewish settlements. As a senior Irgun officer later said:


The clear aim was to break Arab morale and raise the morale of the Jewish community in Jerusalem which had been hit hard time after time...
The villagers resisted the 120 Jewish attackers, as they had a right to, and a heavy machine gun and a mortar were brought up to end the battle. Then the raiding party entered the village and started behaving like a Nazi Einsatzkommando. Twenty-three men were led off to a quarry and executed in cold blood, and between 90 and 230 others were shot down in the village.

Begin's statement afterwards:


Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest....
Not to mention all the bombings and murders commited against the British including blowing up a hotel full of people . If we are calling a spade a spade

We have two men, Begin and Shamir, later leaders of their country, who were terrorists who planned and executed murders.
Much like Arafat ?
Or are they different because they did not hijack planes and killed using different methods ?

 

[ledhed]

While I am calling a spade a spade..why is the carpet bombing of cities with the expressed intent of " displacing the workforce of the enemy " any different than the terrorist methods of attacking both civilian ( World trade center ) and military ( USS Cole ) targets ? You displace workers by blowing them and thier houses to bits btw . And workers are civilians . The US and britain along with Germany and Japan thought nothing of turning whole cities into ash heaps . The Allies in fact made an art of it , developing fire bombing to *"ahem " * displace the largest amount of workers possible. Turning an entire city into a firestorm and the civilians to ashes is not terrorism ? So you say " well that was war " . I 've got news for you ..the terrorist declared " Jihad " or holy war against us ..I guess we were not paying attention. They think they are at war with us ...so I guess it means we should defend ourselves and kill them all before they kill us. But while we are doing that lets not be deluded into thinking we are any better or worse at our own terrorist acts. Terrorism is an equal oppurtunity employer .
In a war he who is the best at destroying the enemy and his support are usually the winner. But without the balls to fight back and do whats needed to win a lesser foe can defeat the stronger. Thats what this current crop of terrorist are banking on . They think the west wont have the stomache for what they will put us through and will surrender to whatever they have on the agenda.
I guess they have not been paying attention either . To win this war we need to give them free cable TV and let them watch the history channel. maybe then they will realise that killing a women like Margaret Hassan only served to make pictures of shot up dead jihadist a welcome sight on the nightly news. much like the news reels of the devastated German and Japenese citys in WW2 brought cheers from the crowded movie theaters . The average American most likely wishes we had it easy and could just vaporize a country and get it over with , like the old days.

 

[Anderton Prime]

ledhed, why is it that you are able, in one single post, to make the point I have been trying to make in almost five months? In any order, well-done.

 

[ledhed]

I just want to kill everybody and blow everything up . You didnt know that ? Ask Arwin he'll tell you. But actually I just want to track down and kill every terrorist and terrorist supporter thats needed to get them to surrender or become unable to kill anyone else. and I want to do it as fast as possible before anyone else but the terrorist have to die...I'm not asking much. But at the same time we should not delude ourselves with self rightouse bullpoop. War is about killing things and breaking stuff.

 

[Anderton Prime]

Well, the end of the world is coming...where will you be?

 

[emad]

Well, the end of the world is coming...where will you be?

behind the scenes, pulling the strings and laughing as it all comes crashing down

 

[ledhed]

I'll be running from the black hellicopters.

 

[wheellift]

But I'am the one that crawled out from underneath a rock...

 

[emad]

And lets not forget that the CIA controls Life, the Universe, and Everything as a part of a secret cult organization out to rule everything and steal the world's oil supplies

 

[ledhed]

ahhhh but your wrong ..its all a secret part for France to take over africa. The CIA is a French plot to undermine the US and keep the world thinking that the Arabs have oil.
The real oil is in Africa. Not the Middle east and all this time we have been sending money to the Saudi's for oil they secretly get at a discount from Willie Rosenburg the Oil Barron of the Ivory coast.

 

[emad]

But Canada is pulling all the strings. After all, nobody suspects Canada - not the goody-two-shoes Canada that tries to maintain peace in the world. Draw all the attention away from the pristine north and divert it to the middle east because the world only *thinks* that the largest oil supplies are out there. Practically half of northern Canada is floating on oil - and it's ours - all ours *muahahahaha*.

Wow, this is great stress relief right when i need it (stupid assignments). Thanks man 👍

edit: sorry for taking part in hijacking your thread Duke. Since I'm a muslim, can I take it hostage and chop it's head off in the Name of Allah?

 

[ledhed]

To get back on target so to speak..Arafats legacy is that of arguably the most successfull terrorist. He proved that terrorism works and that a succesfull terrorist can win the Nobel peace prize and be accepted by the UN . So what do we tell Osama ?

 

[Carl.]

And who do you thing is pulling the strings in Canada? huh? Why do you think Quebec speaks french and their #1 specialty is called a "Poutine"? That's because it is in fact a secret weapon made in the 50s by the KGB and there's actually a secret chemical ingredient in the gravy sauce that makes it brown, but more importantly slowly turns into a cold blood communist zombie! And you fools thought the cold war was over. They're now selling Poutines in McDonalds, your future is doomed! The new world order has come, our time has come! Believe me, Celine Dion was nothing compared to what's coming up next...



edit... sorry, started to write this before world conspiracies break was over.