Yasser Arafat, the controversial Palestinian leader

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On August 24, 1929 AD, controversial Palestinian leader, Mohammed Abdur-Rahman Abdur-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, known as Yasser Arafat, was born in Cairo. His father was from Gaza, while his mother, who died when he was 4-years old, was from Bayt al-Moqaddas.
He grew up in Bayt al-Moqaddas and Gaza, and because of his deviationist nature in attending Jewish prayers at the synagogue and reading the works of the founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, he was often beaten by his father. As a result, relations between father and son were never positive, and when his father died in 1952, Arafat did not come from Egypt (where he was studying) to attend the funeral, nor did he visit his father's grave upon his return to Gaza.
While studying at university in Cairo, he became an Arab nationalist, and as was the custom among secularists, he distanced himself from Islam, and dropped his first name "Mohammad Abdur-Rahman" along with his father's name "Abdur-Raouf" and the family name "al-Husseini", while retaining his grandfather's name, "Arafat" to which he added "Yasser".
He turned into a revolutionary after a meeting in Cairo with visiting Iranian revolutionary scholar, Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Mojtaba Navvab Safavi, who told him that Zionist-occupied Palestine was in dire need of strugglers for its cause. In 1959, while working in Kuwait, he along with Khalid al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), founded the guerrilla group "Fatah", which is a reverse acronym of the Arabic term "Harakat at-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini" (or Palestinian National Liberation Movement), and should not be confused with the Islamic term "Fath" or conquest.
In 1964, when the Arab League set up the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Fatah joined it. Arafat, on being expelled in 1966 from Syria where he had based himself to recruit personnel, built relations with President Jamal Abdun-Nasser of Egypt, and in 1969, was elected PLO Chairman.
In 1971 the PLO and Arafat were expelled from Jordan and moved to Lebanon to continue the struggle against the Zionist entity. In 1982, Arafat and the PLO were expelled from Lebanon following the Israeli invasion, and moved to Tunis where in 1988, a year after start of the Islamic Intefadha in the occupied land, he betrayed the Palestinian cause by recognizing Israel.
Earlier in late 1980, he had made a similar strategic blunder by showing ingratitude to the Islamic Republic's favours and siding with Saddam when that bloodthirsty dictator of the Ba'th minority regime imposed the 8-year was on Iran. In 1994, after a year of his acceptance of the Oslo Accord, which is considered a sellout of the Palestinian cause, he was allowed by Israel to settle in the occupied land.
In late 2004, after effectively being confined within his Ramallah compound for over two years by the Israeli army, Arafat became ill, fell into a coma and died in a Paris hospital in France on 11 November 2004 at the age of 75 – poisoned by the Zionists, after having served their purpose.
Critics have charged him with mass corruption, secretly amassing a personal wealth estimated to be USD $1.3 billion by 2002 despite the degrading economic conditions of the Palestinians. He is often denounced for being too submissive in his concessions to Israel.