On November 13, 1974, at the age of 45, Arafat appeared for the first time at the United Nations General Assembly.
Here he gave a very passionate speech and uttered the uttered utter of the utterly famous phrase: "I come here with an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter gun in the other, please do not let the olive branch slip out of my hands." ”
At this moment, he represents the people of Arafat, who aspire to statehood, and he believes that there will always be light at the end of the tunnel. Thunderous applause ensued, and the speech became a famous scene in the history of the United Nations.
But unfortunately, in the near future, the olive branch and the gun in Arafat's hand slipped to the ground.
Young Arafat
Arafat was born in Jerusalem in 1929 to a wealthy merchant father and a prominent mother who claimed to be a direct descendant of Muhammad.
But Arafat's childhood was not happy, his mother died early when he was 4 years old, his father was away from home all the year round, Arafat and his siblings were fostered in his uncle's house, and his sister, who was 10 years older than him, usually took care of him the most.
In such a family environment, Arafat showed a unique independent spirit from an early age. He is the "child king" of children, often organizing games with military overtones, and will also hold sticks and beat those who do not obey orders.
He also admired Yasser al-Bilah, an Arab anti-colonial hero, and wished he could be like him. Therefore, the people around him often called him "Yasir", and after a long time, this became his name.
Soon, the outbreak of the first Middle East war gave Arafat the opportunity to truly become "Yasir".
At just 17 years old, he took part in the fight against Israel, buying weapons from desert tribes frequented by robbers, and even smuggling arms and ammunition from Egypt to the Palestinian underground.
Unfortunately, his father was killed in the fighting. The defeat of the war and the destruction of his homeland gave Arafat a heavy psychological blow, and he needed a strength that he could comfort and rely on, and finally he found it, and this person was Nasser.
Arafat attended a university in Egypt majoring in civil engineering, where he witnessed the rapid rise of Egypt after the July coup d'état by the "Free Officers' Organization" led by Nasser, so he enshrined Nasser as his spiritual leader.
It was also in this year that Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Students' Union and founded the first Palestinian student magazine, the Voice of Palestine.
In 1954, Arafat, a student representative, approached Nasser and appealed to him to help establish a Palestinian state.
After listening to this, Nasser shook his head thoughtfully, the founding of the country is not as simple as establishing a student union, he only felt that this hairy boy was too bookish, and he didn't take it seriously, and directly refused.
And this year, Arafat was only 25 years old.
In 1956, when the Second Middle East War broke out, Arafat enthusiastically joined the Egyptian Army and became a second lieutenant. During the battle, he used the engineering knowledge he had learned to brilliantly complete the work of defusing the bomb fuse, and gained a lot of fame.
After the war, Arafat worked as an engineer in a public works department in Kuwait, which by then was one of the richest and most modern countries in the Middle East.
With his knowledge of construction, Arafat opened a construction contracting office, and with his painstaking management, he drove a car and lived in a villa, and if he wanted to, he could have settled here and lived a comfortable life.
But he has not forgotten what his people are suffering and how Israel has invaded their land.
If you are poor, you will be good alone, and if you are good, you will help the world.
At the same time as becoming a wealthy man, Arafat was secretly building a massive armed group aimed at rebelling against Israel, and he took a word from the Qur'an and named it "Fatah," which means "to open the door to honor."
Freedom fighters armed with guns and olive branches
At that time, there was more than one organization that wanted to drive out Israel by force, especially in 1959, when Israel unilaterally announced that it would change the waterway of the Jordan River, which flowed through Arab countries, which led to the vigorous rise of anti-Israel organizations in various places.
In 1964, when the first Palestinian National Convention was held, more than 400 people participated, all of whom were anti-Israeli leaders who were rallying forces around the world, while Fatah had only 12 members.
The meeting established the PLO Executive Committee, with Ahmad Shukhari as its first chairman, and it was at the meeting that he famously uttered the harsh words: "Drive the Jews into the sea." ”
Although the cruel words were tough, the PLO did not play a role in the early days of its establishment, and it did not fight a serious fight in three years.
Because, although the PLO has formed an army, the main force behind it is Nasser, and Nasser, who has experienced the second Middle East war, does not want to drag Egypt into a new war with Israel.
And the Palestinians want Nasser, the big brother, to lead the Palestinians to fight against Israel.
As a result, Nasser promoted the establishment of such a PLO in order to channel the national sentiment of the Palestinians, control the Palestinians in practice, and at the same time not allow the PLO to attack Israel through the Gaza Strip.
Arafat saw Nasser's calculations, decisively cut with the PLO, and went alone with his Fatah.
On the last day of 1964, six Fatah commandos infiltrated Israel and planned to blow up a civilian reservoir in Israel.
What is embarrassing is that Arafat had prepared the "Fatah No. 1 Military Communiqué" before the operation and sent it to various Lebanese newspapers, intending to become an instant hit, become bigger and stronger, and he did not know the slightest news of the failure of the Israeli subordinates.
At this time, the newspapers in Lebanon also gave full play to the spirit of the headline party, and the Fatah action became more and more outrageous, and finally after this extremely nonsensical action, the whole Middle East heard of Arafat's prestige, and countless people came to admire it.
Fatah has grown in strength, and its weapons and equipment have gradually increased.
In 1967, the outbreak of the Third Middle East War, the unprecedented humiliating defeat of the Arab countries, the occupation of the holy city of Jerusalem by Israel, and pessimism enveloped the entire Islamic world.
Even many in Fatah feel that it is unwise to continue the struggle against Israel, and that it is better to recuperate and regain strength to fight again.
However, Arafat still insisted that "the struggle against Israel cannot be stopped." He also secretly infiltrated the Israeli-occupied areas to conduct investigations and studies, obtained a large amount of first-hand information on the resistance movement in the occupied areas, contacted anti-Israel people in various places, and explored future guerrilla strategies.
Arafat put it this way: "If we put down the guns in our hands, then the whole Arab nation will be depressed!"
As the number of Fatah attacks on Israel increases, Israel wants to clean up Fatah in one fell swoop. After the third Middle East war, Israel's strength reached its peak, but they never expected that the tiny Fatah would be even more difficult to fight than the Middle East coalition forces.
On March 21, 1968, Israel dispatched 15,000 troops to attack Fatah's military base in Karameh, Jordan.
After receiving the information, some people persuaded Arafat to leave, but he said:
"Since the defeat of the Arabs in 1967, there has to be an organization that sets an example for the Arab nation, and there must be an organization that can prove that there are people in our Arab nation who are ready to fight to the end. So I'm sorry, we can't withdraw, we're going to fight to the last man. ”
Arafat was keenly aware of the inconvenience that Israeli tanks would encounter under the rugged terrain of Karame, so he sent armed men to take the initiative to attack under the cover of night and successfully destroyed several Israeli tanks.
Quite a few guerrillas were loaded with explosives and ran straight to the tanks, where they perished with them.
After 15 hours of fighting, Israel was forced to withdraw its troops, which was unanimously condemned in international opinion.
Fatah's losses, though also heavy, gave hope to the Arabs, who saw Arafat as a spiritual totem. In just 18 months, 25,000 volunteers have requested to join Fatah.
The countries that had previously been suspicious of Fatah have also given money to Fatah.
In July 1968, when the Fourth Palestinian National Convention was held in Cairo, Fatah was no longer what it used to be, with 38 of the 100 seats, making it the most influential faction in the Palestinian resistance.
A year later, Arafat was elected chairman of the PLO's executive committee, gaining supreme leadership.
At the same time, wave after wave of military operations against Israel began.
In 1967, there were 97 PLO cross-border attacks against Israel, resulting in 78 Israeli casualties, in 1968 the number soared to 946, resulting in 273 casualties, and in 1969, the number continued to soar to 2,432, resulting in 243 casualties.
But just when the armed strength of the PLO is getting stronger and stronger, a "roommate" is quietly coming......
Controversy over fath
The formation of the PLO is like the Eighteen-Way Coalition of Yuan Shao in the late Han Dynasty, with Arafat being the leader of the alliance and Fatah being only one of the PLO.
The organization's diverse beliefs, complex backgrounds, lack of unified leadership, and different ways of fighting Israel have led to uncontrollable unplanned events.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is the second political wing in the PLO and is the most competitive with the Fatah line.
In 1968 and 1969, after the international community condemned the numerous terrorist attacks on planes flying to and from Israel, PFLP members proudly declared: "We have gained the attention of the world media at a high price." ”
These infamy were all recorded on the head of PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
In addition, after the "Battle of Karammey", Fatah became more and more arrogant, and many Arab countries that had originally supported Fatah began to resent him.
Jordan was a major supporter of Fatah, but Fatah set up camps all over Jordan and turned Jordan into a "state within a state", often swaggering around the streets with weapons in hand, provoking the population, and openly looting in the streets under the pretext of the Palestinian liberation cause. Finally, the Jordanian government could not bear it anymore and went to the opposite side of the PLO.
From September 1970 to July 1971, the Jordanian military "went on a killing spree" in Palestinian camps in its own territory, killing thousands of PLO guerrillas and killing tens of thousands of innocent refugees, forcing Fatah to flee to Lebanon. This is the "Black September Incident".
brief summary
As Arafat himself defined himself, he was a freedom fighter with a gun, but he was not a good commander, and he led Fatah to grow stronger and stronger and become a feared army in the Middle East, but it was difficult for him to restrain Fatah to become an armed force that united the people, and eventually went further and further and became a retrograde of the times.
Perhaps, if Arafat had read the history of the Gutian Conference in China in his busy schedule, bought a pamphlet called "Rectifying the Party's Work Style," or listened to a song called "Three Major Disciplines, Eight Points of Attention," the outcome would have been different.
In 1971, the PLO convened a meeting and decided to open a new PLO in southern Lebanon.
It was also from this moment that Arafat and his Fatah were gradually ushering in a new tragedy.
Bibliography:
1. Fatah Studies
2. Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian national liberation struggle
Evolution of the Arab League's policy towards Palestine (1945-1989)