Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
ياسر عرفات
	Yasser Arafat speaking at the World Economic Forum in 2001
1st President of the Palestinian National Authority
	In office; 5 July 1994 – 11 November 2004
Prime Minister	Mahmoud Abbas; Ahmed Qurei;
Succeeded by	Rawhi Fattouh (interim)
Third Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization
	In office; 4 February 1969 – 29 October 2004
Preceded by	Yahya Hammuda
Succeeded by	Mahmoud Abbas
Personal details
Born	Mohammed al-Qudwa al-Husseini; 24 August 1929; Cairo, Egypt
Died	11 November 2004 (aged 75); Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, France
Resting place	Arafat's compound, Ramallah, Palestine
Nationality	Palestinian
Political party	Fatah
Profession	Civil engineer
Signature

Yasser Arafat^{[note 1]} (24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004) is best known as the first leader of the Palestinian people. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 to 2004. In 1993, he also became president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

Arafat was born in Jerusalem, Gaza or Cairo.^[1] He studied civil engineering at Cairo University. He worked as an engineer in Kuwait.

In 1994, Yasser Arafat was the first of the three recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. The others were Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. They got the prize for their peace efforts in the Middle East when Palestinian National Authority was formed.^[2]

The views of him are somewhat divided. Some people see him as a hero, who fought for the cause of the Palestinian people. Others see him as a terrorist, who promoted the use of violence to reach his goals. Still others think he was a charismatic leader, but he made too many concessions to the Israeli government.

Yasser died in Paris from a cerebral hemorrhage. The next day he was buried at his compound, with a hasty funeral in Ramallah on November 12. He was reburied on November 13, about 3:30 am. He was buried in a special casket, with the hope of being reburied in Jerusalem one day when an independent State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital would be established.

Related pages[change | change source]

List of Nobel Prize winners by country

Notes[change | change source]

↑ Also spelled Yassir Arafat (Arabic: ياسر عرفات). He was born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (محمد عبد الرؤوف القدوة الحسيني). He is also known by the kunya Abu `Ammar (أبو عمّار).

References[change | change source]

↑ Most sources indicate Cairo as Arafat's place of birth, but others list his birthplace as Jerusalem or Gaza. See here and here for more information.
↑ NobelPrize.org, "Yasser Arafat"; retrieved 2012-9-19.

Other websites[change | change source]

Media related to Yasser Arafat at Wikimedia Commons

[1] Also spelled Yassir Arafat (Arabic: ياسر عرفات). He was born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (محمد عبد الرؤوف القدوة الحسيني). He is also known by the kunya Abu `Ammar (أبو عمّار).

[Birth-2] Most sources indicate Cairo as Arafat's place of birth, but others list his birthplace as Jerusalem or Gaza. See here and here for more information.

[3] NobelPrize.org, "Yasser Arafat"; retrieved 2012-9-19.

[note 1]

[1]

[2]

v t e Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize
1901–1925	Dunant / Passy (1901) · Ducommun / Gobat (1902) · Cremer (1903) · IDI (1904) · Suttner (1905) · Roosevelt (1906) · Moneta / Renault (1907) · Arnoldson / Bajer (1908) · Beernaert / Estournelles de Constant (1909) · IPB (1910) · Asser / Fried (1911) · Root (1912) · La Fontaine (1913) · International Committee of the Red Cross (1917) · Wilson (1919) · Bourgeois (1920) · Branting / Lange (1921) · Nansen (1922) · Chamberlain / Dawes (1925)
1926–1950	Briand / Stresemann (1926) · Buisson / Quidde (1927) · Kellogg (1929) · Söderblom (1930) · Addams / Butler (1931) · Angell (1933) · Henderson (1934) · Ossietzky (1935) · Lamas (1936) · Cecil (1937) · Nansen Office (1938) · International Committee of the Red Cross (1944) · Hull (1945) · Balch / Mott (1946) · QPSW / AFSC (1947) · Boyd Orr (1949) · Bunche (1950)
1951–1975	Jouhaux (1951) · Schweitzer (1952) · Marshall (1953) · UNHCR (1954) · Pearson (1957) · Pire (1958) · Noel‑Baker (1959) · Lutuli (1960) · Hammarskjöld (1961) · Pauling (1962) · International Committee of the Red Cross / League of Red Cross Societies (1963) · King (1964) · UNICEF (1965) · Cassin (1968) · ILO (1969) · Borlaug (1970) · Brandt (1971) · Kissinger / Le (1973) · MacBride / Sato (1974) · Sakharov (1975)
1976–2000	B.Williams / Corrigan (1976) · AI (1977) · Sadat / Begin (1978) · Mother Teresa (1979) · Esquivel (1980) · UNHCR (1981) · Myrdal / García Robles (1982) · Wałęsa (1983) · Tutu (1984) · IPPNW (1985) · Wiesel (1986) · Arias (1987) · UN Peacekeeping Forces (1988) · Dalai Lama (1989) · Gorbachev (1990) · Suu Kyi (1991) · Menchú (1992) · Mandela / de Klerk (1993) · Arafat / Peres / Rabin (1994) · Pugwash Conferences / Rotblat (1995) · Belo / Ramos-Horta (1996) · ICBL / J.Williams (1997) · Hume / Trimble (1998) · Médecins Sans Frontières (1999) · Kim (2000)
2001–present	UN / Annan (2001) · Carter (2002) · Ebadi (2003) · Maathai (2004) · IAEA / ElBaradei (2005) · Yunus / Grameen Bank (2006) · Gore / IPCC (2007) · Ahtisaari (2008) · Obama (2009) · Xiaobo (2010) · Sirleaf / Gbowee / Karman (2011) · EU (2012) · Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2013) · Yousafzai / Satyarthi (2014) · Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet (2015) · Juan Manuel Santos (2016) · International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (2017) · Mukwege / Murad (2018) · Ahmed (2019) · World Food Programme (2020) · Ressa / Muratov (2021) · Bialiatski / Memorial / Center for Civil Liberties (2022)