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The symbol of Palestine

AFP, Ramallah
Yasser Arafat was the standard-bearer of Palestinian nationalism for nearly half a century who never saw his dream of an independent state become reality.
A career that saw him graduate from guerrilla leader to the Nobel prize-winning president of the Palestinian Authority, fizzled out amid Israeli calls for his assassination and demands from his own people for drastic reform.
But his status as the 40-year symbol of the Palestinians' fight for their homeland was never challenged and he leaves a huge gap, difficult to fill.
His death at 75 also showed that time finally caught up with a man known as a survivor, who outlived nearly all his great rivals, even cheating death by walking away from a 1992 plane crash in the Libyan desert
Yasser Arafat was born Mohammed Abdel-Rawf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Hussaini, on August 4, 1929.
The official version of his life history records that he was bom in Jerusalem. However, numerous biographers have established that he was in fact bom in Cairo, where his father, from Gaza, owned a business. He spent his childhood shuttling between the Egyptian capital and Palestine.
By 17, he was running guns to Palestinian groups fighting the creation of a Jewish state as the British mandate in Palestine crumbled after the end ofWorld War II.
He fought in the 1948 war between Israel and its Arab neighbours that immediately followed the foundation ofthe Jewish state. .
Shattered by Israel's crushing victory, he returned to Egypt and Cairo University where he studied engineering and became involved in Palestinian political circles.
Falling foul of Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser, Arafat left Cairo for Kuwait where he established an engineering business with fellow Palestinians.
Together with Khalil al-Wazir, Faruq Khaddumi, Salah Khalaf and Mahmud Abbas, he founded the Fatah movement in 1959 to fight against the Jewish state.
Arafat, who had taken the nom de guerre of Abu Ammar, was elected chairman of the executive commit- tee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in February 1969 and stepped on to the world stage in his trademark Arab headdress, or keffiyeh, and green fatigues.
Short, paunchy and usually sporting stubble, Arafat rose to leadership by the force of his fiery personality, his acute instinct for political survival and his total dedication to the cause.
Invited to address the UN General Assembly in November 1974, Arafat summed up his philosophy in words still relevant three decadeson.
"Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand," he told world leaders in New York
After securing the PLO leadership, Arafat began an odyssey that saw him wind up in Tunisia after being expelled from Jordan by King Hussein's troops in 1970 and from Lebanon by Israeli forces, led by his nemesis Ariel Sharon, in 1982.
With military options running out and the eruption of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the West Bank and Gaza in 1987 he began to negotiate with Israel.
Arafat renounced terrorism in December 1988 and recognized Israel's right to exist, prompting the United States to end a 13-year ban on talks with tiie PLO.
A Palestinian delegation was included in the Jordanian team to the 1991 Madrid conference which launched a US- and Russian-backed attempt to find a comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
As the Madrid talks dragged on, Israel and PLO representatives began secret direct talks in Norway.
The resulting first Oslo agreement, signed in Washington in September 1993, ushered in Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.
Arafat returned to Palestinian territory in July 1994 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin and foreign minister Shimon Peres.
But the peace process was derailed when a Jewish extremist gunned down Rabin November 4, 1995, and it has never really recovered.
US President Bill Clinton brought Arafat and then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak to his Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland in July2000.
The talks, aimed at a final peace settlement, collapsed, paving the way for the eruption of the second intifada two monthslater.
Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in early 1996 but increasingly found himself under fire over corruption and the Authority’s human rights record. He was also criticised from within his own ranks and the radical Islamist organisation Hamas felt he was too lenient towards Israel.
Amid collapsing security and rampant corruption, the calls for him to yield power grew ever louder although his status as the ultimate symbol of Palestinian struggle was never questioned.
The Israeli government, headed by Sharon since February 2001, had long since stopped talking with Arafat
In December 2001, the Israeli army encircled Arafat in his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah, known as the Muqataa, and troops destroyed his fleet ofhelicopters in Gaza.
Arafat, who chalked up a record number of visits to the White House in the Clinton years, never again left the West Bank except to die in a French military hospital.
Nor did he bring that long-promised peace to the Palestinians.
Arafat was fond of saying that he looked forward to seeing the day "when a child flies the Palestinian flag on the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem".