Mourned and honoured by Palestinians, Arafat was buried in November in Ramallah. But his final journey is yet to come... Yasser Arafat, 1929-2004: "Mr Palestine"
WORKERS, FEB 2005 ISSUE
Yasser Arafat, who died in November 2004, personified the Palestinians' fight for freedom: he kept alive their hopes and defied their enemies, often in the most difficult of circumstances. Throughout a life of struggle, he remained true to his objective: a free independent Palestine.
Arafat was born in Cairo in 1929: his father was a textile merchant who was a Palestinian with some Egyptian ancestry; his mother came from an old Palestinian family in Jerusalem. His mother died when he was five, and he was sent to live with his maternal uncle in Jerusalem - then under British rule, which the Palestinians were opposing. One of his earliest memories is of British soldiers breaking into his uncle's house after midnight, beating members of the family and smashing furniture. At the age of 9, he returned to Cairo, where an older sister took care of him.
Before he was 17, Arafat was smuggling arms to Palestine to be used against the British and the Zionists. At 19, during the war between the Zionists and the Arab states, Arafat left his studies at Faud University in Cairo to fight the Zionist usurpers in the Gaza area.
The defeat of the Arabs and the establishment of the state of Israel left Arafat in despair and he contemplated studying in America. Recovering his spirits and retaining his vision of an independent Palestinian homeland, he returned to Cairo University to major in engineering but spent most of his time as leader of the Palestinian students. His life's work as "Mr Palestine" effectively began in 1953 when, as a student in Egypt, he wrote "Don't Forget Palestine" in blood and presented the petition to Egypt's military leader.
Arafat managed to get his degree in 1956, worked briefly in Egypt, then resettled in Kuwait, first being employed in the department of public works. He spent all his spare time in political activities, to which he contributed most of his profits.
Disenchanted with the Arab world's inability to do anything about Israel's 1948 conquests, in 1958 he and his friends founded an underground network of nationalist cells, Al-Fatah, (meaning "conquest"), which in 1959 started a magazine calling for armed struggle against Israel. He was now in effect the leader of Palestinian resistance.
At the end of 1964, Arafat left Kuwait to organise Fatah raids into Israel from Jordan. Also in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established, under the sponsorship of the Arab League, bringing together a number of groups all working to free Palestine.
After the 1967 Six-Day War, Fatah emerged as the best organised and most powerful of the groups making up the PLO. Arafat became chairman of the PLO executive in 1969 and transformed the PLO. No longer a puppet organisation of the Arab states, it became an independent nationalist organisation, based in Jordan. However, the PLO's early terrorist strategy of hijacking aircraft to bring the Palestinian cause to world attention was at best dubious, at worst counter-productive.
Guerrilla attacks
Arafat developed the PLO into a state within the state of Jordan, with its own military forces, acting independently of Jordanian authorities and launching guerrilla attacks on Israel. But in 1970/71 King Hussein of Jordan had them bloodily thrown out. Arafat and the PLO resettled in Lebanon and attempted to repeat the same strategy. This time the PLO were driven out by an Israeli invasion, and Arafat removed his organisation to Tunis.
The period after the expulsion from Lebanon was a low time in the fortunes of Arafat and the PLO. Then, in 1987, the intifada ("shaking") protest movement erupted in the occupied territories, strengthening the PLO and Arafat as it directed world attention to the difficult plight of the Palestinians. In the same year, Arafat declared that the PLO was the Palestinian government-in-exile.
In 1988, Arafat showed far-sighted ability to make necessary tactical shifts in the light of experience with a change of policy announced in a speech at a special United Nations session, declaring that the PLO renounced terrorism and supported "the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to live in peace and security, including the state of Palestine, Israel and other neighbours".
The acceptance of the principle of the two states, Palestine and Israel, living side by side, increased the prospects for a peace agreement with Israel dramatically, though the 1991 Iraq war soon dented it.
The last decade has seen some progress, but much setback in the subsequent struggle to realise this route to independence and to address the contentious issues it left. In 1994 Arafat re-entered Gaza, ending his 27-year sojourn in the diaspora. In 1996 he was elected President of the fledgling Palestine National Authority with 83% of the vote. Palestinian authorities were created; Palestinian political leadership was restored to its homeland.
But later Israel - with US encouragement, connivance and support - has shown its reluctance to honour the agreements. Dissatisfaction with the lack of progress and with living conditions in the occupied territories provoked a Palestinian uprising in 2000, a second intifada, to which Sharon's government responded with massive armed incursions into Palestinian towns and cities, killing hundreds and leading to a 3-year blockade of Arafat in his ruined Ramallah head-quarters. Though ill for many years, he continued to press his people's cause, refusing to quit at the behest of Israel.
Courage
Courage and perseverance personified Arafat; his ability to lead his people out of the most difficult of situations and turn the tables, not just once but many times. That is why he was still so honoured as a leader. He never gave in.
And that is why Palestinians mourned his passing and honoured his life. Thousands took to the streets, many wearing Arafat's trademark, the chequered headscarf. And that is why the Palestinians will continue to draw on Arafat's legacy and spirit as they defy the arrogance of the usurper, Israel; the USA's client state.
Arafat's body has been interred in a stone coffin inside the confines of Ramallah so that it can be moved to Jerusalem when it becomes the capital of a future independent state of Palestine. The final part of his journey is still to come.