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| Yasser
Arafat Dies After Two-Week Illness |
Posted:
11.11.04 | |
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Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died Thursday at the age of 75, after falling
into a coma in a Paris hospital. Palestinian officials plan to bury the controversial
leader at his headquarters in Ramallah following a funeral Friday in the Egyptian
capital Cairo. | |
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Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been a pivotal figure in the Middle East
conflict for more than three decades. While most Israelis consider him a terrorist,
Palestinians and their Arab neighbors consider him the father of the Palestinian
liberation movement, which has sought to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian
territories since 1967.  In
recent years, Arafat has been ostracized as an ineffective leader and his organization,
the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), has fallen into disorganization
and corruption.
What happens next will dictate whether the region descends
even further into chaos and violence, or whether other Palestinians can restart
the peace process, which Arab and most European governments say is the most important
issue facing the world community. "The need to revitalise the Middle
East peace process is the single most pressing political challenge in our world
today," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a statement congratulating
President Bush on winning a second term. | |
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| Chaos
or renewed hope for Palestine | |
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Now that Arafat is gone, his failure to appoint a successor has left
the Palestinian people without leadership and on the brink of what could become
a bloody power struggle. Already, Israeli officials have stepped up security fearing
violence in the region. But, some experts say
Arafat's absence may present an opportunity for the Palestinian people to reorganize
their institutions and resume peace negotiations with Israel. "Arafat's
absence would probably create an opportunity for the Palestinian people to activate
effectively their institutions," Khalil Jahshan, a former president of the
National Association of Arab-Americans, said. "Now the Palestinians have
a chance to have an effective prime minister, an effective president of the [Palestinian
Authority], an effective chairman of the executive committee of the PLO and to
see if they can implement the reforms that 90 percent of the Palestinian people
have been asking for." | |
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| Arafat's
role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict | |
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Yasser Arafat's leadership of the Palestinian people began in 1969 when Arab
states tapped him to head the PLO, a body created to negotiate Israel's withdrawal
from Palestinian territory.
 Throughout
his leadership, Arafat has been criticized for claiming to want
peace, but failing to condemn factions of the PLO that have carried
out terrorist attacks in the group's name.
Arafat came to the United States several times during the
1990s to meet with Israeli leaders and President Clinton, who made an Israeli-Palestinian
solution a priority. However, talks broke down in September 2000, when Arafat
rejected a sweeping peace plan. In 2003, President Bush refused to recognize
the leader as a legitimate partner in negotiations. | |
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| Arafat's
successor | |
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The Palestinian Basic Law, the equivalent of a constitution, calls for the
speaker of the parliament to take on Arafat's role in his absence and then hold
elections within 60 days, according to Amgad Attallah, a former legal advisor
to the PLO.  Two
men have been named as possible successors if elections were to be held. The first,
Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, is the secretary-general of the PLO. Abbas
is considered a moderate and has called for an end to violence against Israelis.
Another
possibility is Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, the second in command at
the Palestinian Authority, the administrative arm of the PLO. Known popularly
as Abu Allah, Qurei is also considered a moderate and has locked heads with Arafat
over his failure to reign in militant Islamic groups like Hezbollah and Islamic
Jihad.  Since
Arafat's illness, Abbas and Qurei have been sharing the president's duties. Qurei
has taken charge of the administrative duties, while Abbas has assumed responsibility
for diplomatic negotiations with Israel, according to Atallah. But, neither man
has been able to garner the same respect the Palestinian people had for Arafat,
according to Atallah.
"None of the Palestinian leaders today have a
popular mandate to pursue peace the way that President Arafat did or still does,"
he said. "The only way that they're going to be able to develop that popular
mandate is through elections." --Compiled
for NewsHour Extra by Kristina Nwazota | |
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