Arafat, Yasser
Arafat, Yasser (1929), Palestinian leader, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization since 1968. An engineer by training, Arafat helped to found the militant Palestinian group Al Fatah in 1956. As chairman of the PLO, he brought the cause of the Palestinians to worldwide attention in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Having renounced terrorism, he concluded a peace treaty with Israel (1993), under which the Palestinians were granted limited self-government in Jericho and the Gaza Strip. For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace (with Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres) in 1993. Since then hardliner opposition to the agreement on both sides has threatened Arafat’s position within the Palestinian movement.
