people’s fight for an own state into the world spotlight but failed to achieve it in his lifetime, died Thursday, November 11 at age 75, officials said.
The French military hospital where he had been treated for nearly a month reported that he died at 3:30 a.m. local time after his final days there in a coma.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat and Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a top Arafat aide, confirmed that Arafat died in a conversation with reporters at Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
His condition launched a flurry of contradictory news reports that he was dead, or brain dead, long before his demise was announced. It also unleashed a clash between his wife Suha and Palestinian officials. Suha Arafat accused the Palestinian Authority of "burying him alive" amid an apparent power struggle over who should succeed him.
BODY TO CAIRO
News reports said his body will be flown to Cairo for a memorial ceremony and, after that, to the West Bank city, Ramallah, for burial. The arrangements were finalized after Israeli authorities gave the green light or his Ramallah burial.
"Following the request of the Palestinian Authority, and taking into account the
recommendation of the security bodies…it is our intention to allow the funeral and burial in Ramallah…" the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said earlier in a statement send to BosNewsLife.
"Israel is interested in having the burial ceremony and funeral arrangements take place in an orderly fashion, in order to avoid confrontations or unnecessary escalation," the Office added. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has refused to allow a funeral in Jerusalem, which Jews and Palestinians both claim as their capital.
MIXED LEGACY
Arafat leaves behind a mixed legacy with people including Palestinians and many in the Arab World praising him as a hero, while others see him as a terrorist. In the first comment from an Israeli official, Justice Minister Yosef Lapid blamed Arafat for global terrorism and the failure to achieve Middle East peace, but expressed hope of improved relations under new leadership.
"I hated him for the deaths of Israelis. … I hated him for not allowing the peace process … to move forward," The Associated Press (AP) news agency quoted Lapid as telling Israel Radio.
Palestinian flags at Arafat’s battered Ramallah compound were lowered to half staff. Television broadcast excerpts from the Quran with a picture of Arafat in the background, AP reported.
QURANIC VERSES
In the Gaza Strip, mosques blared Quranic verses and children burned tires on the main streets, covering the skies in black smoke. People pasted posters of Arafat on building walls, which were reportedly printed earlier in the week in anticipation of his death.
"He closed his eyes and his big heart stopped. He left for God but he is still among this great people," AP quoted senior Arafat aide Tayeb Abdel Rahim, who reportedly broke into tears as he announced Arafat’s death.
In a statement, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan sad he was saddened by Arafat’s passing saying "President Arafat was one of those few leaders who could be instantly recognized by people in any walk of life all around the world. For nearly four decades, he expressed and symbolized in his person the national aspirations of the Palestinian people."
"SIGNIFICANT MOMENT"
However United States President George W. Bush, whose administration criticized Arafat for his alleged ties with terrorist networks, called his death only "a significant moment in Palestinian history" and stressed he hopes "the future fulfills aspirations for an independent, democratic state at peace with its neighbors."
"During the period of transition ahead, all nations must join in helping make progress toward the ultimate goal of peace," Bush added in a written statement. Speaking before the Palestinian leader’s death, following a meeting with the NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, secretary general, President Bush said there may be a new opening for peace in the Middle East, if Palestinians choose a new leader who renounces violence.
"There will be an opening for peace, when leadership of the Palestinian people steps forward and says help us build a democratic and free society," he said. "When that happens, and I believe it is going to happen because I believe all people desire to live in freedom — the United States of America will be more than willing to help build the institutions necessary for a free society to emerge so the Palestinians can have their own state."
PALESTINIAN SPEAKER
The Palestinian parliament speaker was to be sworn in as Palestinian Authority president in the coming hours. Arafat became one of the world’s most familiar faces after addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York in 1974, when he entered the chamber wearing a holster and carrying a sprig.
"Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun," he said. "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."
Two decades later, he shook hand at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on a peace deal that formally recognized Israel’s right to exist while granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Till that pact, his organization, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), had pledged to drive Israel into the sea.
NOBEL PRIZE
The agreement led to the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for Arafat, Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. "Peace will enable us to show our identity to the world, our real identity to the world," he Arafat said during the ceremony in Oslo, Norway.
Several Nobel committee members reportedly resigned to protest against the decision to grand the Palestinian leader the prize for fear he had not committed himself to peace without violence.
Shortly after the Peace Prize, the accord with Israel quickly unraveled amid mutual suspicions and accusations of treaty violations, and a new round of violence that erupted in the fall of 2000 has killed some 4,000 people, three-quarters of them Palestinian.
THOUSANDS KILLED
Roughly 1,000 Israelis died in suicide attacks and related violence, according to estimates. The Israeli and U.S. governments said Arafat deserved much of the blame for the derailing of the peace process. "Even many of his own people began whispering against Arafat, expressing disgruntlement over corruption, lawlessness and a bad economy in the Palestinian areas," AP commented.
A resilient survivor of war with Israel, assassination attempts and even a plane crash, Arafat was born Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa on Aug. 4, 1929, the fifth of seven children of a Palestinian merchant killed in the 1948 war over Israel’s creation. There is disagreement whether he was born in Gaza or in Cairo, Egypt.
Educated as an engineer in Egypt, Arafat served in the Egyptian army and then started a contracting firm in Kuwait. It was there that he founded the Fatah movement, which became the core of the PLO, which both have been linked by Israel and the U.S. to bombings and suicide attacks.
HIJACKING PLANES
After the Arabs’ humbling defeat by Israel in the six-day war of 1967, the PLO thrust itself on the world’s front pages by sending its gunmen out to hijack airplanes, machine gun airports and seize Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.
"As long as the world saw Palestinians as no more than refugees standing in line for U.N. rations, it was not likely to respect them. Now that the Palestinians carry rifles the situation has changed," Arafat explained. Arafat’s failure to groom a successor complicated his passing, raising the danger of factional conflict among Palestinians, analysts say.
A visual constant in his checkered keffiyeh headdress, Arafat kept the Palestinians’ cause at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But he fell short of creating a Palestinian state, and, along with other secular Arab leaders of his generation, he saw his influence weakened by the rise of radical Islam in recent years.
PALESTINIAN FATHER
Palestinians have always viewed Yasser Arafat as "the father of their struggle for statehood." "Be sure we will continue to be committed to the peace process, to the peace of the brave, and will continue to be, with all the peace lovers," he said before his death.
With his trademark checkered black and white kafiyah and scruffy beard, Yasser Arafat jetted around the world promoting the cause of his people. He survived assassination attempts and a plane crash and managed to bounce back after serious political and military defeats.
"He surprised many by his decision at the age of 62 to marry his young Christian secretary, Suha," The Voice of America (VOA) said in a commentary. They had a daughter who was born in 1995. Arafat had always rejected marriage, saying he was "married to the Palestinian cause", VOA recalled.
