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Yasser Arafat, 1929-2004
10:07PM US Central Time/6:07AM Palestine Time -- Today, Yasser Arafat, Chairman of al-Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization and elected President of the Palestinian Authority, died in Paris from complications stemming from a blood disorder at the age of 75. Born Muhammad Abd al-Ra'uf al-Arafat al-Qudwa, Yasser Arafat was related to the Husayni family and had strong family ties to Gaza and Jerusalem. He first became active in Palestinian politics while an engineering student in Cairo in the early 1950s, where he headed the Union of Palestinian Students at Fu'ad I University (now Cairo University) from 1952-1957. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Arafat launched his own contracting firm in Kuwait and quickly prospered. He probably used his personal wealth to launch al-Fatah, the most prominent of a number of exile groups advancing armed struggle as a means of liberating Palestine.
For nearly five decades, Yasser Arafat was a larger-than-life figure for those who admired him as well as those who hated and feared him, or, to be more precise, for those who hated and feared the Palestinian view of history, justice, and politics. Since the late 1960s, Arafat was the icon of the Palestinian cause. Like Che Guevara, Arafat's image on a poster, a T-shirt, or a television screen could convey rich and complex meanings and sentiments across wide and diverse social landscapes. With his trademark black-and-white checkered kuffiyah draped carefully over his shoulder so as to assume the proportions and shape of the map of Palestine, appearances by Arafat were almost always electrifying political events.
Many are the tales of Israeli, European, South African, and North American peace activists and journalists who waited hours to meet "Abu Ammar," Arafat's nom de guerre. After being whisked through the darkened streets of Beirut, Damascus, Cairo or Tunis in the wee hours of the morning, many foreigners had a chance to sip coffee in an office or parlor with the jovial, optimistic, and often emotionally explosive Arafat. Although having attained international status as a political leader of a major third world revolutionary movement, Arafat was a small man, somewhat shy, yet approachable in informal small group meetings and journalistic interviews. He could also be extremely funny and often demonstrated a self-deprecating form of humor. Although he stated for decades that he was married to the cause, he eventually wed in his 60s, taking Suha Tawil, a woman 34 years his junior, as his spouse in 1990. Since 2000, they had been living separately. Later, she commented, she had "married a myth."
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http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3288.shtml
Many are the tales of Israeli, European, South African, and North American peace activists and journalists who waited hours to meet "Abu Ammar," Arafat's nom de guerre. After being whisked through the darkened streets of Beirut, Damascus, Cairo or Tunis in the wee hours of the morning, many foreigners had a chance to sip coffee in an office or parlor with the jovial, optimistic, and often emotionally explosive Arafat. Although having attained international status as a political leader of a major third world revolutionary movement, Arafat was a small man, somewhat shy, yet approachable in informal small group meetings and journalistic interviews. He could also be extremely funny and often demonstrated a self-deprecating form of humor. Although he stated for decades that he was married to the cause, he eventually wed in his 60s, taking Suha Tawil, a woman 34 years his junior, as his spouse in 1990. Since 2000, they had been living separately. Later, she commented, she had "married a myth."
Read More
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3288.shtml
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DATE
billions may have been stolen from Palestinian coffers
Sun, Feb 5, 2006 8:27AM
why he was "all boxed in"
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 10:26AM
to by (more)
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 10:01AM
Suha
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 9:58AM
Who could the poster above be?
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 9:55AM
Just how bad was Arafat?
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 9:21AM
Yassir Arafat, 1929-2004
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 9:18AM
Yassir Arafat, 1929-2004
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 8:22AM
Yassir Arafat, 1929-2004
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 8:04AM
better off dead
Tue, Nov 16, 2004 1:37AM
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