The death of Yasser Arafat brings to a close one of the most tumultuous and tragic lives of our times. The man William Safire would label "the only lifelong terrorist to win a Nobel Peace Prize" was a man of contradictions and controversy from the very start, and his death raises many questions about the future of the Palestinian people he led for almost forty years.
In the dangerous world of Arab politics and militias, Arafat pushed himself to the very top, becoming something of a "terrorist in chief" for the Palestinian people, all the while promising that they would one day return to their homeland as a victorious people. Now upon his death, his beleaguered people appear no closer to their goal of statehood and true peace than when he stepped onto the world stage.
Though he would often claim to have been born in Jerusalem, Yasser Arafat was actually born August 29, 1929 in Cairo, Egypt. He was the fifth child of a Palestinian merchant, and his life was dramatically changed when young Yasser's mother died when he was only four years old. Arafat and his younger brother were sent to Jerusalem to live with an uncle.
Thus, Yasser Arafat was in the right place at the wrong time and when the so-called "War of Independence" ended in 1948 the state of Israel was established and Palestinian Arabs became exiles. By 1949, Arafat had moved back to Cairo in order to found the Palestinian Students' League. Driven by a charismatic personality and a sense of personal destiny, Arafat pushed himself to the top of the student movement and made his debut on the world scene in 1956, when he appeared at an International Student Congress meeting in Prague wearing a kaffiyeh--his trademark Palestinian headdress--and put himself forward as a spokesman for the Palestinian people.
With the State of Israel growing economically and militarily, and gaining the world's respect, young Palestinians like Yasser Arafat grew restless, pushing Arab nations toward war with Israel and promising the return of Palestinian Arabs to their homeland. In 1965, Arafat formed his "Fatah" guerilla movement and began his systematic and strategic attacks upon Israel. In the aftermath of the Arabs' disastrous 1967 war, Arafat became the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO]. His leadership of that organization would introduce the Western world to terrorism in a new form.
Arafat was tragically incompetent as a politician. He earned the distrust of the Arab governments he called upon to give him cover and support, and his misreading of King Hussein of Jordan would lead to "Black September" and the expulsion of the PLO from Jordanian territory.
Frustrated with a lack of progress and determined to make the world take notice of its cause, the PLO turned to a methodology of mass terror in 1972 when a newly-named "Black September" branch of the organization hijacked airplanes and then infamously seized Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games.
The Munich attack became a milestone in the tragic story of twentieth century terrorism. Even as the Germans had hoped to host a peaceful Olympic Games as a way of demonstrating the stable recovery of their country after World War II, the event instead became a symbol for a century gone horribly wrong. No one anticipated an attack of this scale. As Tony Walker and Andrew Gowers, authors of Arafat: The Biography, commented: "Israel's intelligence community had concluded that it would face continuing Palestinian terrorism, including the danger of spectacular and eye-catching operations, but none of Israel's three intelligence and security services dreamed that the Palestinians would seek to disrupt the Olympic Games, the world's most sacred sporting occasion." Nevertheless, on September 5, 1972 a group of eight commandos breached Olympic security and forced their way into the headquarters of the Israeli Olympic team. Before the end of the ordeal, eleven Israeli team members would die. Most notably, the entire world was able to watch these tragic events unfold on live television.
