Yasser Arafat
Born: 24-Aug-1929
Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt
Died: 10-Nov-2004*
Location of death: Paris, France
Cause of death: Cerebral Hemorrhage
Remains: Buried, Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine
Gender: Male
Religion: Muslim
Race or Ethnicity: Middle Eastern
Occupation: Politician, Terrorist
Nationality: Palestine
Executive summary: Palestinian leader, former terrorist
Military service: Egyptian Army
Yasser was his nickname since Arafat was a boy, meaning "easy-going". His mother died when Arafat was an infant, and he was raised by an uncle in Jerusalem, which was then occupied by the British. One of his earliest memories, Arafat said, is of British soldiers on a rampage, tearing up his uncle's house and belongings. Is it true? Hard to say. Arafat also said he was born in Palestine's Gaza Strip, or Jerusalem, but his birth certificate says Cairo, Egypt. Some say Arafat's estranged father was killed in battle against the Israelis in 1948. Arafat has said Haj Amin al-Husseini, a 1920s proponent of Palestinian nationalism who's widely remembered by Arabs as heroic, was related to his mother's family, but there's little or no evidence of this.
As a teenager in the 1940s, Arafat got involved with Palestinian politics, and fought against the idea of Israel before Israel was re-established by U.N. edict. Arafat started a terrorist group called Al Fatah ("the struggle") in 1956, while pro-Palestinian forces in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan started the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Arafat was elected Chairman of the PLO's Executive Committee in 1969. He ran it as a terrorist group through the late 1980s.
Then he secretly met with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Norway in 1993, and signed the so-called Oslo Peace Accords. Palestine got a limited form of semi-self-rule, and a promise that Israel would withdraw some settlements from disputed areas. Arafat, Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres got to share a Nobel Peace Prize.
Arafat was elected President of the Palestinian Authority in 1996, and since then Israel's government has taken a hard turn to the right. The region has suffered an endless spiral of authoritarian Israeli crackdowns inspiring Palestinian suicide bombings and vice versa.
Father: Abdul Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (textile merchant, d. 1948)
Mother: Zahwa Abdul Saod (d. 1933)
Brother: Fathi (d. 2-Dec-2004 stomach cancer)
Wife: Suha At-Taweel Arafat (Christian, m. Nov-1991)
Daughter: Zahwa (b. 24-Jul-1995)
University: BS Architectural Engineering, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt (1951)
Nobel Peace Prize 10-Dec-1994 (with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin)
Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman of the Executive Committee (1969-2004)
Plane Crash Libya (8-Apr-1992)
House Arrest Ramallah, West Bank 3-Dec-2001 to 24-Feb-2002
Coma 4-Feb-2004, approximately two days
Hunger Strike
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Source: http://www.nndb.com/people/403/000022337/
*Bolds and Highlight added for emphasis. Blogmaster.
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