#人生道路上, what do you do when you are confused #
Early family life, social work in youth, full participation in politics, lows and coping, highlight moments
Arafat was born on 24 August 1929 in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in Cairo and Jerusalem. In 1948, he fought in the war against the newly established state of Israel, when many Palestinians were expelled. As a qualified engineer, he got a job in Kuwait; From there, he organized the attack on Israel's guerrilla Fatah. After Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, Arafat became the leader of the Palestinian guerrillas' umbrella group, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). These groups resorted to terror to attract the world's attention, but Arafat came to understand that he had to accept the State of Israel before the United States was willing to mediate in the dispute. He approved a secret negotiation in Oslo in which Palestinian negotiators met with the Israelis. In 1994, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "efforts to create peace in the Middle East".
Early family life
His father was a textile merchant, a Palestinian of Egyptian descent, and his mother came from an ancient Palestinian family in Jerusalem. She died when Yasir (he was known as Yasir) when he was five years old, and he was sent to live with his uncle, Jerusalem, the capital of British Mandate Palestine. He rarely reveals his childhood, but one of his earliest memories is of British soldiers breaking into his uncle's house after midnight, beating family members and smashing furniture.
After four years in Jerusalem, his father brought him back to Cairo, where an older sister cared for him and his siblings. Arafat never mentioned his father, who was not close to the children. In 1952, Arafat did not attend his father's funeral.
Social work in youth
In Cairo, before the age of 17, Arafat was smuggling weapons into Palestine to be used against the British and Jews. At the age of nineteen, during the war between the Jews and the Arab states, Arafat left his studies at the Franco-German First University (later Cairo University) to fight the Jews in Gaza. The defeat of the Arabs and the establishment of the State of Israel made him so desperate that he applied for a visa to study at the University of Texas. Reviving his spirit and keeping his dream of an independent Palestinian homeland, he returned to Franco-German University to major in engineering, but spent most of his time as a leader of Palestinian students.
He did earn his degree in 1956, worked briefly in Egypt before resettled in Kuwait, first employed in the public works sector and then successfully ran his own contracting company. He spent all his spare time on political activities, and he contributed most of the profits. In 1958, he and his friends founded Al-Fatah, an underground network of secret cells, and in 1959 began publishing a magazine advocating armed opposition to Israel. At the end of 1964, Arafat left Kuwait to become a full-time revolutionary, organizing Fatah to raid Israel from Jordan.
Full participation in politics
Also in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established under the auspices of the Arab League, bringing together many groups dedicated to the liberation of Palestine for the Palestinians. Arab countries tended to have a more harmonious policy than Fatah, but after being defeated by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, Fatah rose from the underground to become the PLO's strongest and most well-organized organization, and in 1969 Arafat became chairman of the PLO Executive Committee. The PLO is no longer a puppet organization of Arab states that wants to keep the Palestinians quiet, but an independent nationalist organization based in Jordan.
Troughs and coping
Arafat developed the PLO into a state within the Jordanian state, with its own military power. King Hussein of Jordan, disturbed by his guerrilla attacks and other violent tactics against Israel, eventually expelled the PLO from the country. Arafat tried to establish a similar group in Lebanon, but this time was driven out by an Israeli military invasion. However, he kept the organization alive by moving its headquarters to Tunisia. He himself was a survivor who escaped death in a plane crash, survived any assassination attempt by Israeli intelligence agencies and recovered from a severe stroke.
His life was a constant travel, from country to country to advance the Palestinian cause, always keeping his actions as secret as he was about any detail of his private life. Even his marriage to Suha Tawil, a Palestinian half his age, was kept secret for about 15 months. She has started important humanitarian activities at home, especially for children with disabilities, but her prominent role in public activities in Oslo has surprised many Arafat observers. After that, the daughter Zawa, named after Arafat's mother, was born.
The period following his expulsion from Lebanon was a low point for Arafat and the PLO. The uprising protest movement then strengthened Arafat by directing the world's attention to the difficult plight of the Palestinians. Policy changed in 1988. Speaking at a special session of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Arafat declared that the PLO renounced terrorism and supported "the right of all parties involved in the Middle East conflict, including the Palestinian State and Israel, to live in peace and security." and other neighbors".
Highlight moments
In November 1988, the 19th extraordinary session of the Palestinian National Council adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring Jerusalem the capital of the State of Palestine. In April 1989, Arafat was elected President of the State of Palestine at a meeting of the PLO Central Committee. In addition, the prospects for a peace agreement with Israel have become bright. After the PLO's setback in supporting Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the peace process officially began, culminating in the 1993 Oslo Accords. Later, in 1994, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "efforts to create peace in the Middle East", and his domestic and international influence peaked.