The icon will be remembered for a might long time to come He did not die as he would have liked and he was not buried where he wanted but his last farewell was as should be. This must have been the first time ever that a body had three funerals on three continents: in European Paris, African Cairo and Asian Ramallah. And this is not to count the spontaneous outpourings of grief in every Arab city and the private mourning in every Arab home. Arafat did not die a martyr as he had wished, nor was he buried in Jerusalem. However, in France government officials stood to sombre attention during a formal ceremony to see him off. In Cairo the leaders, or senior representatives, of more than 60 nations filed behind his coffin in an awe-inspiring military funeral procession while in Ramallah the crush of mourners around his coffin was so tight that if it had rained not a drop of water would have reached the ground. In life Arafat was a formidable presence and a compelling politician. For four decades his name made headlines and his face was an almost permanent feature of the media. He was the subject of thousands of commentaries and analyses in newspapers and periodicals. He gave hundreds of interviews and a veritable library of books has been published about him in dozens of languages. Yet in spite of his passing, in spite of this uninterrupted flow of opinion and information there will always be more that can and should be written about Arafat. It is rare to find in a single person such an ability to affect the course of history, let alone that degree of diversity, if not contradiction, in his positions, behaviour, abilities and traits. Little wonder, then, that every one of the thousands of people who met him has a story of their own, a unique and exciting testimony to offer. Arafat made a profound impact on all who met him, whether they knew him personally or encountered him only briefly. Vast numbers of personal accounts have yet to be related and it remains very unlikely that a single person will be able to produce an authoritative biography of Arafat. It would be almost impossible for one individual to comprehend and order the multitudinous details of his long and eventful life. Here I offer little more than an approximation of a sketch of the person and politician, from his birth in Sakakini in Cairo on 4 August 1928 to his burial in Ramallah on 14 November, 2004. Arafat's place of birth, name and family origins offer the first key to at least some aspects of his personality. Although most Arafat experts agree that Mohamed Abdel-Raouf Al-Qudwa was born in Cairo, Arafat himself never admitted this, always insisting that he was born in Palestine and then brought to Egypt. Even when confronted with the hard evidence of his birth certificate Arafat did not flinch. His father had that certificate produced on the basis of false information so that his son would be admitted into the Egyptian public school system. Researchers will be hard put to find much additional information on Arafat's father who, in the early 1950s, was exiled from Egypt to Gaza where he died and was buried in the Khan Yunis graveyard. Arafat was more forthcoming about his mother, a descendant of the Abul-Saouds, one of Jerusalem's leading families as he never ceased reminding people. In affirmation both of his maternal bond and the bond, through her to this Jerusalem lineage, he named his daughter, born in 1995, Zahwa, after his mother. It is impossible to understand Arafat's personality and behaviour without taking into account his emotional attachment to Jerusalem. The power of this attachment was evident in those crucial hours at Camp David when President Clinton attempted to persuade Arafat to accept a formula for dividing sovereignty over East Jerusalem. Arafat allegedly told Clinton that the area in front of the Wailing Wall had belonged to his mother's family and that as a child he used to play in the square with his friends. He then said he could not bring himself to squander the heritage of his mother's family in Jerusalem let alone, as the leader of his people, accept anything less than full Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem. In the face of the barrage of threats and promises brought to bear on him at Camp David, he would not budge on the subject of Jerusalem, where his mother was born and where he claimed to have been born and hoped to be buried. Here one inevitably recalls Arafat's famous appeal: "We shall go together and pray together in Jerusalem." We should also remember that in whatever exile he found himself he would say, "From here I can see the churches and mosques of Jerusalem." Few, perhaps, are aware that Arafat was listed as a Jerusalem resident in the Israeli census of 1967. He had slipped into Palestine clandestinely and at the time of the census was posing as a school teacher and living with a well-known Jerusalem family. Stories testifying to Arafat's deep attachment to Jerusalem are endless and few failed to remark on the passion in his voice as he described how his heart raced and his eyes filled with tears when he looked down on Jerusalem from the helicopter that transported him from Gaza to Amman. This, of course, was at a time when he was still permitted to travel. Most observers noted an intensified focus on Jerusalem during the last three years of Arafat's life. The name of the Holy City cropped up with ever increasing frequency in his speeches and statements. Israel was furious at the slogan Arafat cried out to the crowds during a mass rally in front of his compound in Ramallah. "We will sacrifice our spirit and blood for you, Arafat!" the people cried, to which he responded, "To Jerusalem we are going as martyrs by the millions." The battle cry was taken up in all subsequent Palestinian protest demonstrations and marches. Arafat wanted it known that he was connected to Jerusalem through more than his maternal lineage. He always stressed the connections between his family name and the prominent Jerusalem family of Al-Husseini, specifically to Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, mufti of Palestine and the undisputed Palestinian political leader from the 1920s to 1948. He also made frequent reference to other members of this family. Abdel- Qader Al-Husseini, commander of Al-Jihad Al- Muqaddas Army who died in the notorious Jabal Al-Qastal battle in Jerusalem in 1948. Abdel- Qader was in turn the father of Faisal Al- Husseini, the Palestinian leader who had achieved such a large following that his death occasioned a tumultuous mass funeral ceremony in Jerusalem. The memory of this scene may have been one of the reasons why Sharon was so adamant in refusing to grant Arafat's wish to be interred in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque. Arafat had the heart of both a lion and a child. Whatever criticisms and accusations his enemies and adversaries hurled at him, they all recognised his courage and intrepidity. Arafat could always be seen at the head of his soldiers, fearless of death and leading the charge. At the same time he retained something of the innocence and tenderness of a child, as well as a child's determination to chase his dreams. Setting out on his career as a engineer Arafat moved to Kuwait in 1957 where he became a successful and wealthy building contractor. He gave all that up when, in 1964, he abandoned his civilian garb and donned, instead, his trademark military uniform and emblematic kufiya, folded in a manner that might represent the map of Palestine. Even at this early phase in his political career he devoted himself to the details that would affirm his identity with the cause of his nation and people. Soon afterwards he founded the first Palestinian fedayeen base in Hama, Damascus. It was from here that he lit the first flare of the armed struggle, inaugurating a new phase in the history of the Palestinian national movement, and in the history of the Middle East. During this preparatory phase Arafat led fedayeen reconnaissance missions across the Syrian and Lebanese borders into Israel. Arafat personally selected the team that mounted the first Palestinian paramilitary operation. The bombing of the Eliyon Tunnel on 1 January 1965 was the first of many declarations that would reverberate following the founding of Fatah. Although he was arrested in Lebanon in 1964, and once again in Syria in 1966, prison never broke his will. On the contrary, he emerged only to resume the struggle with more ardour and determination than before. After Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights in 1967 Arafat became the first and only Palestinian leader to personally head fedayeen commando raids across the River Jordan and into the West Bank. Also, during this period, he secretly returned to the occupied territories where he succeeded in establishing the first resistance cells in Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah before having to flee the territories in order to escape Israeli pursuit. In February 1968 it was Arafat's Fatah Movement that engaged superior Israel's far larger forces in the battle of Al-Karama. In 1970 Arafat, together with Fatah fedayeen, faced the onslaught of Jordanian forces in the notorious Black September battles, escaping with his life only by virtue of the intervention of a delegation from the Arab summit that managed to smuggle him from Amman to Cairo. At the outset of the 1970s Arafat re- established Fatah in Lebanon and resumed the struggle against Israel from that front. In 1972 he stood among his soldiers as Israel waged a full-scale strike against fedayeen bases in Lebanon. In the October 1973 war Arafat sent his forces to fight alongside Egyptian and Syrian forces while he once again personally assumed command of the fedayeen groups that attacked northern Israel from Lebanon. Arafat opened up a third front in this initially two-front war, for which Israel would not hesitate to take revenge. In 1973 Israeli commandos assassinated his three closest comrades, Kamal Adwan, Kamal Nasser and Abu Youssef Al-Najjar, and not long afterwards they assassinated his aide Abu Hassan Salama. In 1978 Arafat was once again at the vanguard of his forces, fending off an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon that reached the outskirts of Sidon. Later Israel unleashed its most advanced military aircraft in an attempt to hunt down and kill Arafat. It repeated the attempt during its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which must have been the first and only time in military history in which a squadron of fighter jets set out in pursuit of a single target, chasing Arafat from house to house and from street to street. I recall several times seeing Arafat in Beirut, racing out into the street, machinegun slung over his shoulder, shouting, "The winds of paradise are blowing, my people. I can feel the taste of martyrdom." Israel staged a repeat performance after Arafat had re-established himself in his next place of exile in Tunisia. Another squadron of fighter planes roared across the Mediterranean to bombard his headquarters and bring the entire structure toppling down upon his head. Miraculously Arafat escaped that attempt on his life as well. While in Tunisia Arafat embarked on a seemingly madcap adventure that encapsulates both his courage and his idealistic zeal. It was 1983 and he felt he could no longer remain safe and sound while his forces and his fellow Palestinians were being bombarded in northern Lebanon. Secretly he made his way to Cyprus, from where he completed the rest of the trip in a rubber dinghy, surfacing almost miraculously among his comrades to lead them in yet another battle before narrowly escaping once again. Recent rumours that Israel had tried to poison Arafat did not appear out of thin air. Of the 13 assassination attempts on Arafat there was one in which a man called Abul Said, a Mosad recruit, was assigned the mission of doing precisely that. The plot, hatched in 1975, was discovered before it could be executed and the agent made a full confession. The death-defying Palestinian leader retained the steeliest self-possession under the most gruelling conditions. When his plane crashed in the Libyan desert, killing the entire crew, it was Arafat who sustained the morale of the few survivors. It was this very courage, together with his many near scrapes with death that led his companions, together with the Palestinian people as a whole, to believe that he would return safe and sound from the hospital in Paris. No one could imagine that he would die of illness rather than as the martyr he had wished. In the epic of the revolution heroes such as Arafat do not die ordinary deaths. Theirs must be a dramatic conclusion that reverberates through history, and with Arafat the Palestinians refused to have it otherwise. The tumultuous scenes following his final departure stand as testimony to the strength of his legend. Arafat, as we have said, had two hearts, or better yet, a heart large enough to encompass both courage and compassion. This was evident in the paternal love that Arafat had always emanated in spite of the fact that he only married and became a father a decade ago. Long childless, Arafat had an unbounded fondness for all children, and particularly for the children of Palestinians who had died for the cause. These orphaned souls he adopted, provided for their every need and tried to pass every possible holiday with them. When among children Arafat himself became childlike, playing with them, rocking them on his knees and hugging them. Palestinians loved to take advantage of any occasion to bring their children to greet Arafat and he took every opportunity to shower them with affection and have his picture taken with them. His affection was genuine, which is something that children could sense which is why they, more than others, returned his affection with adoration. Arafat had just as much affection and compassion for mothers and the elderly, especially those condemned to refugee camps. He would break out in a broad smile when women rushed up to greet him during his visits to the camps. These women, he would say, are the first to whom we owe our gratitude for preserving national memory. It is they who create the bedrock of the image of the nation that Israel plundered in the souls and minds of new generations who did not have the good fortune to be born or live in Palestine. Grandmothers, in particular, were natural conveyers of the national legacy through the nightly bedtime stories they related to their children's children on life as it was in their lost homes on their lost land. When, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Israeli forces apprehended and interrogated dozens of Palestinian youths the interrogators could not contain their surprise at the determination with which their victims insisted that their place of origin was a city or village in Palestine. Some said they were from Safd, others from Jaffa and others from Haifa, and could readily volunteer the most accurate descriptions of the homes in which their grandparents had lived and the fields their grandfathers tended, down to the numbers of olive or orange trees that grew in the orchards. This was not the Palestinian imagination speaking -- the phenomenon is attested to in Israeli accounts of the 1982 war in Lebanon which have been translated into Arabic. It was undoubtedly in reciprocation for the affection with which he always displayed towards them that women and the elderly poured out in such numbers at each of the funerals held in honour of Arafat, a man who for so long had no children of his own but was affectionately called by his people Abu Ammar, the father of Ammar. Then, when he was blessed finally with a child of his own, it was impossible for him to become the father whom no other children could share. It will be some time before Zahwa comes to terms with the fact that she was the only daughter of a man who was the father to all Palestinians. Arafat had numerous outstanding traits, among them a keen intelligence and infectious charisma. He possessed a singular rapidity when it came to absorbing and cataloguing information. It was as if he had arrived in this world with a ready made mental filing system prepared to store and process everything he might encounter in life. He had an astounding memory, capable of recalling names and events at the snap of a finger, and in this capacious memory he had a special archive for everything that pertained to the Palestinian cause including, of course, the panoply of UN resolutions and their multifarious provisions. There was no way he could be cornered in a debate that required instant access to dates and details of the decisions of the international community on Palestine. Some dubbed Arafat the heir to Machiavelli, though he always insisted he did not qualify since he could never step beyond the fine line between ruse and compromise. Certainly he demonstrated this in Camp David where he showed his superb ability to negotiate room for manoeuvre, though never to the detriment of fixed Palestinian principles. Another distinct Arafat trait was his unshakeable self-confidence and his absolute belief in the inevitable victory of the cause of his people. In 1982, the Israeli writer Uri Avnery asked him where he planned to go after having been expelled from Beirut. "Palestine," Arafat said firmly, without a moment's hesitation. During the 12th session of the Palestinian National Council in Algeria in 1987 the leader of one of the largest Palestinian factions spoke at length on the circumstances that might prevail against the birth of a Palestinian state. Arafat interrupted him, citing the Quranic verse: "They see it in the distance and we see it close at hand." Then, pointing at himself, he added, "And we are telling the truth." Arafat was a leader, not an intellectual or political theorist. His political rhetoric was simple but compelling. He spoke in banners, the message of which he would drive home by repeating them several times. Among his most memorable sayings were: "The wind will not shake the mountain," "If you don't like it, take a drink from the Dead Sea," and "A promise is a promise, and an oath is an oath." People often fault Arafat for his tendency to exaggerate. Yet, there were times when hyperbole expressed an essential truth. Few are aware that it was Arafat who described the Algerian revolution as "the revolution of a million and a half martyrs", though everyone knew that a million died over the course of that upheaval. No one denies Arafat's inexhaustible energy and his ability to work an 18 hour day without rest. It was well known that he preferred to hold his most important meetings after midnight, after which he would continue working until the crack of dawn. Arafat slept little but had trained himself to sleep deeply. On long trips he could drop off to sleep the moment the plane left the ground and wake up fully alert as soon as it touched down. Only a few days before Arafat died I came across an article in the Israeli press with the headline "The curse of Arafat's handshake". The story related how every Israeli prime minister that had ever shaken the Palestinian leader's hand met with disaster: Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Shimon Peres lost the elections, Benyamin Netanyahu never completed his term of office and Ehud Barak not only did not complete his term of office but had to resign as Labour Party leader. Only Sharon had never shaken Arafat's hand and thus escaped the "curse", according to the article. The Palestinian leader was known to be as lenient as he could be forceful. He was always prepared to reinstate those who had rebelled against him and most returned to his fold. Perhaps the best-known example of this is the story of Wasef Ariqat, the artillery commander in Beirut. This officer, whom Arafat had personally promoted, not only broke ranks with him in 1983 but joined the Syrian-led bombardment of Arafat's forces in Tripoli. Nonetheless, years later, when Ariqat wished to return to Arafat, Arafat not only forgave him but handed him a senior post in the PA Ministry of Interior. This was only one instance among the many in which Arafat demonstrated his wellspring of paternal mercy. There is one aspect of Arafat's character that is problematic. He was one of the most ascetic political leaders of modern times. He did not smoke or drink, not even coffee. He never went to the cinema or the theatre or engaged in other such forms of entertainment. For a long time he did not even own his own home and well into his career would doss in the fedayeen bunkers and camps, while later he spent most of his time in his office, camping out at night on the rudimentary furniture in the adjacent room. He ate little, albeit he admitted to a near addiction to honey, but was a generous host, always insisting on feeding his guests more than their fill. Yet in spite of this personal austerity he seems to have surrounded himself with people of dubious ethics. Certainly he must have known what they were up to but he never brought anyone to account for financial irregularities or other forms of corruption. It has been argued that he inherited the blight of corruption from the prevailing Arab order but this does little to explain, let alone justify, the contradiction between his personal austerity and his tolerance of venality in others. Of course he has been accused of other faults, most notably his determination to monopolise authority. It was said that all strings of power led from him and right back to him. But if that was the prevailing image of his governing style when he died it was not how he operated in the early years of his control over the PLO. In spite of his many superior skills and talents he was careful to encourage collective rule among his companions in the struggle. Nor did he begrudge the fact that many of his comrades vied with Arafat in stature. Among these were Abu Youssef Al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, Abu Ali Ayyad, Khaled Al-Hassan, Salah Khalaf, Saad Sayil and Abu Jihad. All of them eventually died or were assassinated, ending the collective leadership and gradually eliminating checks on Arafat's inclination to authoritarianism and the personification of leadership in himself. As he grew older he grew more set in his ways, and as US-Israeli pressure on him mounted, he became more resistant to change and less capable of taking the decisions necessary to implement a programme of national reform. He was also encouraged in this intransigence by those around him who had vested interests in the financial and administrative corruption that prevailed and who fuelled his fears that Palestinian demands for reform were part of a greater conspiracy to overthrow him. The controversy over the character of Arafat was not restricted to Palestinian circles; it became an Israeli obsession as well. Some Israeli analysts contended that Arafat had forfeited a last-minute opportunity to become the Palestinian Ben Gurion, the Israeli leader who, in 1947, agreed to the creation of the state of Israel on only part of "Greater Israel". Under the UN partition resolution the plot of land allocated to Israel did not include Jerusalem or Hebron, let alone the whole of Samaria and Judea. Nevertheless Ben Gurion accepted the resolution against the outcry of the Zionist right and accusations that he had betrayed the holy quest for the "promised land". According to some Israeli analysts the once practical and pragmatic Arafat had become an idealist and had started to imagine himself as a latter day Omar Ibn Al- Khattab or Saladin. Another school of thought, that even had American proponents, refuted the Israeli narrative that cast Arafat as responsible for forfeiting a historic opportunity in Camp David. There is no denying that a Palestinian state was the dream to which Arafat had consecrated his life. However, it is not true that Arafat died, like Sheikh Amin Al-Husseini, before having secured something for his people. If Arafat did not realise the dream of a Palestinian state he brought his people to within a stone's throw of that dream. No account could be complete without bringing up the subject of Soha Arafat and the commotion she stirred and others stirred around her. Arafat had always said that he was married to the cause, and when pushed he said that if he would marry anyone it would be Fatma Bernawi. Barnari, dark complexioned, with African features, was the first female Palestinian detainee, arrested after a fedayeen operation in Jerusalem in 1967 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Although she was later freed in a prisoner exchange deal, Arafat had by that time resumed the refrain of being married to the cause. And so he remained until he met Soha Al-Tawil, daughter of the Palestinian journalist Raymonda Al-Tawil. Arafat first met Soha in the home of her elder sister, the wife of Ibrahim El-Sous, the PLO representative to France. When Soha returned to Tunisia with her mother she was placed in the secretarial team of Arafat's presidential bureau. Over time a friendship developed between the president and his young blonde secretary and eventually they married. Abu Mazen opposed the marriage for many reasons, one of them being his bitter animosity towards Raymonda. While he could not prevent the marriage he had his way when he insisted that Soha should not accompany Arafat to Washington for the signing ceremony of the Oslo accord on 12 September, 1997. Soha, for her part, had her heart set on becoming Palestine's first lady, an impossible dream given her lack of credentials for the part. Ultimately it was driven home to her that while the Palestinians needed an Abu Ammar they had no need for an Umm Ammar. When Arafat and Soha moved to Gaza her dream grew even more remote. Gaza's conservative climate precluded any political or social role for her. Not long afterwards their daughter Zahwa fell ill and Soha took her to Paris for treatment. She then decided she would remain in the French capital. It was only this summer that Soha decided to move from Paris to Tunisia, placing Zahwa in a school there. Soon afterwards Arafat was rushed to hospital in Paris, giving Soha the opportunity to settle scores with her Palestinian detractors, especially Abu Mazen. Or so she imagined. Cut off from Palestine for years she had no sense of the pulse of the Palestinian street and thus plunged headlong into a losing battle that could have ended in disaster and disgrace for all. Israel was quick to exploit the poisoned atmosphere, portraying the confrontation between Arafat's wife and Palestinian officials as one between scavengers circling around Arafat's dying body as they positioned themselves to scramble over his estate. Sadly the Arab press played on the same theme. Perhaps the only fitting conclusion to this sorry incident is for the PA to recuperate that part of Arafat's estate that comprises Palestinian national assets under his supervision and to place it under the strict and transparent controls that should govern all PA assets. Given the manner in which Fatah and PLO funds were administered Arafat clearly exposed himself to the charge that he not only condoned but fostered corruption. While his detractors harped on this and related flaws in recent years they readily acknowledge Arafat's major contributions to the Palestinian cause. It was he who almost single-handedly transformed what was portrayed as a refugee crisis into the cause of a people struggling against foreign occupation and striving to fulfil their right to self- determination in an independent state. Arafat succeeded in keeping the PLO as autonomous as possible from the control of Arab regimes and in establishing it as the sole legitimate organisational framework for uniting and representing the Palestinian people. He succeeded in placing the cause of his people at the top of the international agenda. He was the first leader of a national liberation movement to directly address the General Assembly. His drive and commitment was a major dynamic in the production of international resolutions in support of the Palestinian cause and in securing the recognition, in 1989, by more than 100 nations, of the Palestinian declaration of independence and the legitimacy of its goal of establishing an independent state. He was the first popularly elected Palestinian president. But above all he was the leader who, more than anything else, came to symbolise the Palestinian cause. In life he became a legend and in death the legend will remain.
