Difference between revisions of "Yasir Arafat"

Revision as of 17:55, June 28, 2013

Yasser Arafat, (Arabic: ياسر عرفات yāsir ^arafāt) (Cairo, Egypt 1929 - Paris, France 2004), born Mohammed Al-Husseini al-Qudwa Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat, was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, President of the Palestinian National Authority and head of the Fatah movement. Throughout his life Arafat was dedicated to the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Arab Palestinian state.

Early life

As part of an effort to present himself to the world as the epitome of Palestine, Arafat would often claim to have been born in Jerusalem (sometime he would identify Gaza as his place of birth). The truth of the matter is that he was born in Cairo, Egypt. Even in his later years his accent and dialect was typical of Egyptians rather than Palestinians.^[1]

In 1933 Arafat’s mother died and he was sent to Jerusalem where he lived with his relatives until being called back into Cairo by his father in 1937. With the exception of the 1948 Israel’s independence war (where he fought against the Jews alongside the Muslim Brotherhood, which he later joined in 1952^[2]), Arafat continued to live in Egypt^[3] until 1956 when he moved to Kuwait.^[2]

Terrorist career

In the late 50’s Arafat and other Palestinians founded the Fatah movement, dedicated to bringing the destruction of Israel through armed struggle.^[2] Fatah started its terroristic campaign against Israel in 1965^[4], two years before the so called Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip started. In 1969, Arafat took over the PLO (which was formed five years earlier) and turned it into an umbrella organization which included the Fatah and other Palestinian terrorist groups.^[4]

The phased strategy, pretend moderation and doublespeak

After 1973 Yom Kippur War the Arabs concluded that destruction of Israel cannot be achieved in one strike. As a result, the PLO under Arafat adopted in 1974 a political program called the phased strategy. The phased strategy called on the Palestinians to establish control over any part of “Palestine” (ie Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) even if other parts of it remained under Israeli control, with the ultimate intention of taking over the entirety of Palestine (ie destroying the state of Israel^[5]

Approximately at the same time, Romania’s communist president Nicolae Ceausescu taught Arafat how to pretend to be a moderate and against terrorism while simultaneously commissioning terrorist operations (to be committed by groups not publicly affiliated with Arafat) and working towards Israel’s destruction.^[6] Similar advice was also being given by the Vietnamese. ^[7]

In 1988 press conference in Geneva Arafat made statements renouncing terrorism and embracing Israel’s right to exist.^[8] However, the statements he and other members of the Palestinian leadership made when speaking toward Arab and Muslim audiences were very different. In the very same year when Arafat supposedly accepted Israel’s right to exist, his deputy Salah Khalaf expressed his commitment to the phased strategy: "This is a state for the coming generations. At first, [the Palestinian state] would be small ... [But] God willing, it would expand eastward, westward, northward, and southward ... [True,] I [once] wanted all of Palestine all at once. But I was a fool. Yes, I am interested in the liberation of Palestine, but the question is how. And the answer is Step by step."^[9] Until the end of his life, Arafat and his entourage played a game of doublespeak, expressing support for peace and coexistence when speaking to Israeli and western audiences while calling for terrorism and Israel’s destruction when speaking to Arabs and Muslims.^[5] While Arafat tried to present himself as a moderate, the actions of the PLO under his command said otherwise. In 1990 the Palestinian Liberation Front, a faction of the PLO, tried to launch a terrorist attack on Israel’s beachs.^[10] Arafat and the PLO leadership refused to condemn the attack or take action against the Palestinian Liberation Front.^[11] In what should have convinced everybody that the Palestinian terrorist hasn’t changed, Arafat gave his support for the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.^[12]

The Oslo Agreements

The PLO lost much of its financial support after the fall of the Soviet Union and its allied governments in eastern Europe. Further compounding the problem was Arafat’s support of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War; the rest Arab of the governments withdrew their financial support from the PLO, diminishing its ability to yield dominance among the Palestinians.^[13] As a result, Arafat was facing marginalization. As a result, Arafat was willing to answer Israel’s peace offers and signed the Oslo accords in 1993 in order to rebuild his power by renewing relations with Israel and the United States. In the Oslo accords Arafat promised to refrain from terrorism; in return, a PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority was established as a governing body responsible for administering self rule in the Palestinian territories and preventing terrorism through its police force.^[14][15] In 1994, in what would later turn out to be the most shameful moment in the Nobel Prize committee’s history, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East," following negotiations leading to the Oslo Accords of 1993.^[16]

Evidence that Arafat would not abide his words of peace was immediately forthcoming. King Hussein of Jordan sent Israel a message saying “Israel is doing business with the worst possible person. Arafat has proved time and again that his word cannot be trusted.”^[17] At the same time that he was signing the Oslo accords, Arafat had a pre recorded message from him broadcasted on Arab TV saying that the agreement was actually and implantation of the phased strategy, ie destroying Israel in phases. ^[5] By showing this message Arafat once again showed that his real plan was to dupe Israel into giving him control over more and more territories until he could expand Palestinian rule to include all of Israel. Other Palestinian leaders, such as PLO official Faisal Husseini, outright declared that the Palestinians’ real goal was to destroy Israel.^[18] More evidence of Arafat’s real intention in signing the Oslo accords emerged after his death.^[19] A year after signing Oslo, Arafat made a speech in a Johannesburg mosque calling for Jihad against Israel. He also compared the Oslo accords to the treaty of Hudaybiya, a peace treaty Muhammad signed with the Quraysh tribe only in order to strengthen his forces and later on use them in order to conquer the Quraysh.^[20] Arafat compared the peace agreements to the treaty of Hudaybiya once more in 1998, and that “all options are open before the Palestinian people”, meaning he will return to full blown terrorism is necessary.^[21]

Arafat support for terrorism was not limited to words. His Palestinian Authority and its police forces not only did little to stop terrorist attacks against Israelis by other Palestinian factions such as Hamas, but in 1997 Arafat gave Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad a green light to continue terrorist attacks against Israel.^[22] Arafat’s own men also continued to be involved in terrorism. The Palestinian police porce, which supposed to have no more than 24,000 police officers, grew to 40,000 men in 1998.^[23] In direct violations of the Oslo agreements, during the late 90’s the Palestinian police forces were relentlessly working on procuring and producing anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, machine guns and hand grenades, clearly intended to be used in an upcoming confrontation with Israel.^[24] In 1997, the commander of the Palestinian police Ghazi Jabali ordered police officers under in his command to carry attacks against Israelis. The same year Jabali proudly declared that more than 150 members of the terrorist groups Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were employed by the Palestinian police. At least 25 of these man were wanted terrorists.^[25] In addition to the Palestinian police, Arafat also created the Fatah controlled Tanzim militia as part of his terrorist infrastructure. .^[26]

Arafat also used anti-Israeli incitement in order to encourage terrorism.^[27]

Demographic subversion

Another means by which Arafat tried to destroy Israel was by trying to force it to comply with the so called “right of return”, the Arab demand that all the Palestinian refugees from the Israeli independence war and their descendants will be allowed back into Israel. If this demand were materialize, Arabs would soon become the majority population in Israel, leading to its unification with the West Bank and Gaza Strip.^[28] Arafat was an ardent supporter of the right of return untill the end of his life. As late as 2004 he made statements calling for the return of all Palestinian refugees into Israel.^[29]

Camp David peace talks and the second Intifada

On July 2000 peace talks between Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak were held in Camp David. The talks’ ultimate goal was to reach a final settlement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.^[30] The Israelis offered him a Palestinian state on 100% of the Gaza Strip, 95% of the West Bank and joint control over Jerusalem. Due to the fact that Israeli was not willing to give all the Palestinian territories and agree to the right of return, Arafat rejected the offer.^[31] Two months later, in September 2000, he launched the Al-Aqsa intifada, a campaign of terrorism against Israeli. While Palestinians have often tried to present the intifada as a spontaneous uprising against Israel which resulted from Sharon’s visit to the temple mount, truth of the matter it was planned in advance by the Palestinian Authority, as several figures the leadership have disclosed, and the preparations for an armed confrontation with Israel were evident even before the Intifada started.^[32] His Tanzim militia played a key role in carrying attacks against Israeli.^[26] In addition to ordering his own men to engage in terrorist attacks, Arafat also instructed Hamas a to commit terrorist operations against Israel.^[33] Arafat also tried to incite Arab residents of Israel to join his terroristic campaign.^[34]

As a means to encourage suicide bombings Arafat offered money to the families of suicide bombers. In 2001, Arafat paid $2,000 to the family of a Palestinian homicide bomber who attacked the beach front Dolphinarium dance club in Tel Aviv, killing 21 people, mostly teenagers. More than 120 people were injured. Arafat sent the terrorist’s father a letter praising his son’s murderous act.^[35]

On January 2002 the Israeli navy intercepted Karine A, a weapon carrying ship intended for the Palestinian Authority. The boat included 50 tons of advanced weapons including Katyusha rockets, riles, mines and anti-tank missiles. An interrogation of the ship’s crew revealed that the purchaser of the weapons was an official in the Palestinian authority. The missiles captured had a long range and could have reached Israel’s southern coastal cities.^[36]

Eventually Israel took actions against Arafat and in April 2002 launched operation Defensive Shield, in which the IDF fought against the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank. Arafat’s compound (the Mukataa) was raided. Arafat was confined to the compound until his hospitalization in 2004.^[37] Palestinian documents captured during the operation proved beyond doubt that Arafat was heavily involved in terrorism.^[38] Interrogations of captured terrorists yielded similar evidence.^[39][40] While the Israeli siege on the Mukataa continued, Arafat was still continuing his involvement in terrorism. On September the head of the Israeli military intelligence revealed that orders for terrorist attacks were still being given from Arafat’s compound.^[22]

Death

After his health to began to deteriorate, Arafat was flown in October 2004 to a military hospital in Paris. A little more than a week later he died.^[41] His doctor confirmed that Arafat died of AIDS.^[42]

Personal life

Arafat remained single until marrying Suha Arafat (born Suha Tawil) in 1990, when he was 61. During most of their marriage, Arafat lived separately from Suha and their (supposedly) shared daughter Zahwa.^[43][44]

His marriage to Suha might have been a cover to hide his true sexual leanings. Ion Mihai Pacepa, former head of the Romanian intelligence, has written that Arafat started to have sex with other men already as a teenager. ^[45] Former Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe has also said that during a 2000 dinner in Washington Arafat repeatedly rubbed his leg under the table.^[46] According to former National Security Agency analyst James J. Welsh, some of Arafat’s homosexual liaisons were with boys as young as 13.^[42]

These allegations, along with the fact Arafat spent most of his time apart from his wife, raise serious questions about the parentage of his supposed daughter.

Quotes

• “I come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.” United Nations General Assembly, 1974.

• In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. But if the enemy incline toward peace, do thou also incline toward peace, and trust in God. Arafat Nobel Prize Speech ^[47]

See also

• Terrorism
• Che Guevara
• Menachem Begin
• Yitzhak Rabin

External links

• Yassir Arafat:1929-2004 'HonestReporting'
• Yassir Arafat Encyclopaedia of the Orient.

References