Who was Yasser Arafat?
Arafat led the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella body whose 1968 charter called armed struggle the only way to liberate Palestine. In September 1993 the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist in peace, and Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians. The Oslo Declaration of Principles that followed set up a Palestinian council for an interim period of up to five years, with the hardest questions left for later talks. Arafat then served as president of the new Palestinian Authority until his death in 2004. Negotiations with Israel in the years after Oslo did not reach a final settlement.
Political views
- The PLO's 1968 National Charter declared that armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.Source: avalon.law.yale.edu
- The same charter defined Palestine by its British Mandate borders and called the 1947 partition and the creation of Israel illegal.Source: avalon.law.yale.edu
- It described Zionism as a political movement tied to imperialism and urged states to treat it as illegitimate.Source: avalon.law.yale.edu
- In the 1993 Oslo process the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist in peace.Source: history.state.gov
- Israel in turn accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.Source: history.state.gov
- The Declaration of Principles provided for an elected Palestinian council for an interim period of no more than five years, leading to a final settlement based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.Source: avalon.law.yale.edu
- It left Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and borders for later talks, and it started the handover of powers from Israeli military administration with Gaza and Jericho.Source: avalon.law.yale.edu
- Later steps included the Cairo agreement of 1994, the Oslo II agreement of 1995, the Wye River memorandum of 1998 and the Sharm el-Sheikh memorandum of 1999. The Camp David summit of July 2000 failed to reach a final agreement.Source: history.state.gov
Legacy
Admirers see Arafat as the leader who made the Palestinian cause an international one and who took the PLO from armed struggle to negotiation and a limited form of self-rule. Critics, including many Israelis, hold that the PLO under his leadership carried out attacks on civilians for decades and that violence did not end after 1993. Palestinian critics fault the Authority's handling of power and the stalled path to statehood.