I pulled this off of Reuters just a moment ago. (Of course, once I post this, I find another thread with the same news. Go figure) Arafat, Icon of Palestinian Cause, Dead at 75 4 minutes ago Top Stories - Reuters By Wafa Amr PARIS (Reuters) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites), who rose from guerrilla icon to Nobel prize-winning peacemaker only to fall into isolation amid new violence with Israel, died in a French hospital on Thursday, a hospital spokesman said. Reuters Photo Reuters Photo Slideshow: Mideast Conflict The announcement of the death of the 75-year-old president, who symbolized the Palestinian struggle for an independent state, ended days of rumors over his condition. "Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority (news - web sites), died at the military hospital Percy, Clamart on November 11, 2004, at 3.30 (2130 EST)," Christian Estripeau, chief doctor and hospital spokesman, said at the hospital in the Paris suburb of Clamart. Arafat had suffered a brain hemorrhage on Tuesday at the hospital where he was flown from the West Bank on Oct. 29. His body will be flown to Cairo for a ceremony on Friday and then to the West Bank city of Ramallah for burial the same day, an aide said. An Arafat aide, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, was near tears as he announced the death in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Palestinian Authority declared a 40-day mourning period in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites), where mosque loudspeakers blared the announcement along with verses from the Koran. In Gaza, residents burst from their houses to fire guns into the air. People hugged one another, saying "Our father is dead," taxis honked their horns and their drivers hung Arafat's picture on the front of their cars. Dozens of armed Palestinians rallied in Gaza City. Ahmed Sallam, 30, of Arafat's Fatah (news - web sites) faction, said: "It is a black day. I do not think the day Jerusalem was occupied was sadder than today." At Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, Palestinian flags flew at half-mast as soldiers and bodyguards wept and consoled each other. There was no sorrow, though, among Israeli officials. "I hated him, not personally, but a deep hatred for a man who made terrorism a method in the world," Justice Minister Yosef Lapid told Israel radio. QUEST FOR STATE UNACHIEVED The Palestinian president died with his 40-year quest for a state unachieved, a succession scramble pitting old loyalists against a younger generation on the cards, and Israel cementing its grip on occupied land in the absence of diplomacy. Arafat's death, removing the man Israel called an impassable obstacle to peace, offered a chance for the first peace bid in years. But no potential successor wields his authority and fears are strong that infighting could hamper any peacemaking. Arafat held all the reins of power -- the Palestine Liberation Organization (news - web sites), the self-rule Palestinian Authority and the main Fatah political movement. He groomed no successor, but over the decades took on the aura of an irreplaceable patriarch. Confirming Arafat's death, French President Jacques Chirac said: "With him disappears a man of courage and conviction who for 40 years embodied the Palestinians' struggle for recognition of their national rights." Chirac urged the international community to persevere with efforts to ensure an international peace plan known as the road map is put into effect in the Middle East. "Mr Arafat led our people from a status of refugees who need to be settled somewhere or given some humanitarian support into a people with rights," Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath told CNN on Wednesday. Arafat was a legendary survivor, escaping a 1970 Jordanian onslaught provoked by a partial PLO takeover of the country to launch attacks on Israel, a 1982 Israeli siege of his lair in Beirut and a 1992 plane crash in the Libyan desert. SWIFT DEMISE But the demise of the charismatic Arafat, acclaimed by Palestinians as the father of their nationalist struggle while branded by most Israelis as an irredeemable "face of terror," came swiftly and threw his people into shock. Senior Palestinian sources said there would be a funeral in Cairo and burial in Arafat's shell-shattered headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah -- where he had effectively been pinned by Israel for over 2-1/2 years. Israel said on Wednesday it would permit Arafat's burial in Ramallah and Arab leaders, even from states with which it remains officially at war, to attend the memorial service. Arafat was short and bald, with a permanent stubbly beard. he favored a black and white Arab headdress and cut an unlikely figure as a guerrilla chief despite the olive drab uniform and pistol he wore for so long on his hip. In 1994, Arafat returned from exile in Tunis to head a self rule Palestinian Authority after interim peace deals. For those, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (news - web sites) and foreign minister Shimon Peres. But a peace summit in 2000 aimed at creating a Palestinian state in the two territories alongside a secure Israel collapsed in disputes over borders, sovereignty over Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees from wars since 1948. Fighting resumed and Israel reoccupied or encircled West Bank cities amid a tide of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants. (Additional reporting by Diala Saadeh, Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)
Do you guys think things will change in Israel now? I think he was a major hinderance to the peace process and while he was alive, he was an icon to many for what he represents. His death, as I see it, is a new period in time for Israel and the Palestinians. I hope some kind of 2 state solution can be devised with the "new" leader of the PA.
How very telling of the typical hardline zionist revisionism that the report subtly whitewashes the recent past (as it has the entire actual history of atrocities perpetrated against the rightful Palestinian owners of the land from the turn of the 20th century up to the creation of the apartheid state) by saying of Arafat "...only to fall into isolation" as if his isolation wasnt a concerted an active undertaking by the likudniks, their barabrous occupation and their Washington bullyboys. Just more typical zionist PR played out in mainstream, unquestioning, reporting. The ones who have stood in the way of peace are those who have always held the power. Shaking hands and smiling for the cameras to establish the fraudulent paradigm for a gullible and misinformed public only to go beyond the public agreement in grasping for ever further concessions behind closed doors in order to make peace untenable for the Palestinians. Then a simple follow up PR campaign to once again paint the victims as the wrongdoers. See an example of the fraud called "the peace process"
Yeah and don't forget those same zionists piloted remote controlled missile firing airplanes into the World Trade Center! How's that for a paradigm, right Lick? Hyperactive responses which demonstrate an inability to differentiate Arafat from the Palestinian cause do nobody any favors. Arafat was a terrorist and made a number of terrible choices during his time. He also constructed a Palestinian Authority which was completely and utterly corrupt and ineffective. Good riddance.
So now its Palestinians who were behind 911? How desperately you grasp to any conflation of the paradigm however ludicrous to avoid waking up to reality PB. Sad pathetic corporate drone as ever. The truth is linked for those who care enough about the truth to educate themselves out of such lame regurgitations of mainstream falsehoods as "arafat stood in the way of the peace process". The real terrorists have always been the hardline zionists from the very earliest days when history records their most prominent leaders as members of the Irgun and Stern Gang ethnic cleansing brigades.
Its interesting that you got that from my post seeing as I didn't say anything of the kind. Maybe you were just looking for a pretense to say "ludicrous conflation of the paradigm"? Also please explain how kidnapping and murdering an olympic team doesn't count as "real terrorism" in your opinion.
It would be too temping for Hamas and Islamic Jehad, and other like minded groups, to sit on the sidelines while the Palestinian Authority's attempts to adhere to their constitution. If these radical groups are not swiftly and effectively put down before the next election, a situation resembling a civil war may occur. The wild card may be Suha Arafat, the greiving widow. She seems to have the ambition to run the P.A. Being a woman greatly reduces her options. But very possibly she has access to the hundreds, maybe billions, of foreign aide stashed away by Arafat. This money could be used to purchase the loyalty some of the radical groups inside the P.A. Let the festivities begin.
