Yasir Arafat (1929-2004), president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) from 1996 to 2004 and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 to 2004. Arafat led the Palestinian people in their efforts for statehood. For his work in pursuing peace between Palestinians and Israel, he was awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace prize along with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. However, many people associated Arafat with Palestinian violence against Israel and regarded him as a terrorist who provoked turmoil in the Middle East.

Arafat was born in either Egypt or Jerusalem—historical accounts vary—and raised in Jerusalem, Egypt, and the Gaza area. When Israel occupied the Gaza Strip in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949, Arafat fled to Egypt. In 1956 he earned an engineering degree from Cairo University, where he became involved in politics, chairing the Palestinian Students Union. In the early 1960s he helped found Fatah, a Palestinian guerrilla group committed to opposing Israel militarily.

In 1968 Arafat took Fatah into the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which coordinated several groups opposed to Israel. During the late 1960s Fatah made guerrilla raids into Israel, mostly from Jordan. The success of some attacks earned Fatah power, and the group soon became the largest and most powerful of the PLO’s factions. In 1969 Arafat was made chairman of the PLO’s Executive Committee as well as commander-in-chief, thereby becoming the recognized leader of the Palestinian nationalist movement.

The PLO made many of its raids into Israel from Jordan, where large numbers of Palestinians lived. Jordan’s government, headed by King Hussein, tolerated the PLO’s raids until Arafat began to threaten the government’s authority. In 1970 Hussein cracked down on the PLO, and Arafat was forced to flee, by some reports disguised as a woman. About 10,000 Palestinians were killed in the fighting.

For several years the Arab world could not reach a consensus about whether to support Arafat. Then, in 1974, the Arab League recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Soon after the Arab League’s declaration, the United Nations (UN) invited Arafat to address its General Assembly. In an infamous gesture, Arafat spoke to the assembly with a pistol strapped to his hip. He called for the creation of a Palestinian state and promised a violent response if the call went unheeded. Several years of PLO assassinations, hijackings, and bombings followed, gaining the PLO and Arafat international prominence.

For most of the 1970s, Arafat was based in Beirut, Lebanon, from which his guerrillas attacked Israel and where he oversaw an enormous bureaucracy that provided social welfare services to Palestinian refugees. In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to stop the PLO’s attacks. Arafat was forced to flee again, this time to Tunis, Tunisia. Following this defeat his power was deeply diminished, and many observers believed his leadership was in danger.

Arafat, however, remained in power and in 1988 renounced military opposition to Israel and recognized Israel as a legitimate state. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and prompted the Persian Gulf War of 1991, Arafat publicly endorsed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, in part because Hussein likened Iraq’s “liberation” of Kuwait to the Palestinian goal of “liberating” Israel. Arafat’s endorsement enraged many of his financial backers, most of whom were Arabs from oil-rich countries who opposed Hussein’s invasion of oil-rich Kuwait.

Arafat regained international credibility when he moved toward peace with Israel shortly after the end of the Gulf War. After several months of negotiations, Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin witnessed the signing of a historic agreement on September 13, 1993, in Washington, D.C. Their famous handshake at a White House reception was viewed as a sign of Arafat’s transition from terrorist to peacemaker. The following year Arafat, Rabin, and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The 1993 agreement provided for limited Palestinian self-rule in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip under a newly created Palestinian National Authority. Arafat acted as chairman of the PNA until its first elections were held in January 1996. In these elections, Arafat was elected president by an overwhelming majority.

Peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians stalled in mid-1996 after the assassination of Rabin by a right-wing Israeli and the election of a conservative government in Israel. On several occasions, Arafat’s attempts to restrict radical Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad won him the opposition of many Palestinians. At the same time, however, Israeli and U.S. officials consistently accused Arafat of failing to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel. This led to tremendous pressure on the Palestinian leader, as he sought to maintain his political viability with both his domestic constituency and his international partners in the peace process, and to reconcile their conflicting interests and agendas.

Arafat participated in peace negotiations with Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and U.S. president Bill Clinton in July 2000 at Clinton’s Camp David, Maryland, retreat. Many observers believe that at this meeting Arafat failed to grasp his best opportunity for the creation of a Palestinian state. But the negotiations broke down, and the Palestinian intifada (uprising) resumed. In December 2001, in response to a surge in Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel, Israeli forces surrounded and severely damaged Arafat’s compound in the West Bank town of Rām Allāh, also known as Ramallah. Israeli forces kept Arafat confined to the compound until he traveled to France for medical care shortly before his death there in November 2004.