Yasser Arafat: A survivor - *HOLD BACK

2004-11-09 13:17

Hazel Ward

Jerusalem - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has lived most of his life in the shadow of death during decades of conflict, with numerous enemies poised to liquidate him.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the veteran leader's longest and arguably his most bitter foe, has spent decades trying to track down and kill Arafat, and more recently isolated him physically and politically.

For Sharon, the ex-general known for his military prowess and nose for trouble, the 75-year-old Arafat, who virtually invented plane hijackings in the 1960s, is the father of international terrorism.

Back then, Sharon branded Arafat "a terrorist whose hands are stained with blood" and pledged never to shake them.

In the summer of 1982 as then defence minister, Sharon launched a military offensive against Palestinian sanctuaries in Lebanon and hunted Arafat all the way to Beirut.

But international intervention prevented him from flushing out the Palestinian leader and a disappointed Sharon was forced to watch Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters leave Lebanon for a new exile in Tunisia.

Trapped for 3 years

Although he failed to wipe out his arch-nemesis, Sharon deployed Israeli troops to trap Arafat in his West Bank compound for the last three years of his life, uttering threats to deport or even assassinate him.

In January 2002, the burly premier made the headlines when he publicly stated his regret at not having killed Arafat when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to chase out the PLO.

"In Lebanon there was an agreement under which he must not be liquidated, and all things considered, I regret it," Sharon said.

Slamming his arch-foe as a "murderer", "pathological liar", "dog" and likening him to Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden, Sharon decided in December 2001 to confine Arafat to his Ramallah headquarters in a bid to isolate him totally.

Last September, Israel's security cabinet agreed in principle to "remove" Arafat. Earlier this year, Sharon said he was "a marked man" who would meet the same fate as two top officials from the radical Hamas movement, who were killed in a series of Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

Sharon 'most active foe'

Although Sharon is Arafat's most active and vocal foe, the man who has represented the Palestinian cause for nearly half a century, was not short of other enemies in the past, notably the late King Hussein of Jordan who died in 1999.

After the 1967 Six Day War, the PLO moved its nerve centre to Jordan from where it launched a series of raids on Israel, provoking a fierce response, and putting a major strain on Amman's relations with the West.

In September 1970, with Hussein increasingly afraid for his throne, the king ordered a major military strike against a Palestinian faction led by Arafat.

The strike inflicted a severe blow on the Palestinians and forced Arafat to relocate to Lebanon.

It was there that Arafat's relations with the late Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad also began to deteriorate, despite initial coordination during the civil war. In 1983, Arafat was deported to Tunis, escaping a Syrian assassination bid en route.

A decade later, relations between Arafat and Syria took a further turn for the worse after the Palestinian leader signed the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel, causing Assad to denounced him as a traitor to the Arab cause.

Arafat also fell foul of the Kuwaiti leadership in 1990 after the Palestinians openly supported Iraq's invasion of the emirate in 1990, which kickstarted the Gulf War.

- SAPA