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• Yasser Arafat was a Palestinian leader who founded Fatah in 1959 and served as the Chairman of the PLO and President of the Palestinian National Authority. Though he spent most of his career campaigning against Israel and advocating Palestinian self-determination, he changed his position in 1993 and formerly accepted Israel's right to exist. In 1994 he won the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for work at the Oslo Accords. Starting at this time, Arafat and Fatah lost much of their influence as Hamas gained more general popularity. Arafat died on November 11, 2004, from causes that are not known.

• Fast Facts

  1. Full Name: Muhammad Abdul Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini
  2. Born: August 24, 1929
  3. Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt
  4. Founder of the Fatah
  5. Former President of the PLO
  6. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
  7. Died: November 11, 2004

• Cause of Death Controversy

  On October 25, 2004, Yasser Arafat was placed under close observation by his doctors after vomiting in a meeting. Days later an attending doctor announced that it was suspected Arafat was suffering from Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, a condition leading to low blood platelet counts. When he slipped into a coma on November 3, many began to speculate that his condition was the result of poisoning or the AIDS virus. The suspicion that Arafat had suffered from AIDS was supported by the newspaper Haaretz, which claimed French doctors had reported he suffered from "all of the symptoms" of the virus. This claim was later refuted by The New York Times. A French investigation ruled out the possibility of poisoning, though, because Arafat's family did not allow an autopsy to be performed, the true cause of death may never be known.

• Related Mahalo Pages

  Ariel Sharon | Menachem Begin | Anwar Sedat | Mahmoud Abbas | Yitzhak Rabin | PLO | West Bank | Fatah | Palestinian State | Keffieyeh | Division of Jerusalem | Nobel Peace Prize Winners | Israeli-Palestinian Conflict | Arab League | Arab League-Israel Talks | Aung San Suu Kyi

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