Yasser Arafat’s legacy: The death of Palestinian statehood - analysis

Yasser Arafat died 20 years ago this month – November 11, 2004 – at the age of 75. He was born in 1929 in Cairo and was active in activism that led to the founding of the Fatah movement in 1959.

Fatah eventually became one of the major Palestinian factions that led to the formation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.

The years since Arafat’s death have seen some major changes for the Palestinians. But in many ways, the failure of their cause over the last two decades is a result of the decisions of Arafat during the 10 years he presided over the PA.

This surely wasn’t the legacy he expected to have. Arafat likely thought he was leading the Palestinians toward statehood.

Spelling out Arafat's failures

In the wake of the October 7 massacre, it is unlikely they will have a state, and it is more likely the future will consist of an endless conflict that escalates and de-escalates every few years.

What went wrong? First of all, many people probably forget it has been two decades since Arafat’s death, a testament to how much he has been obscured by current events.

Arafat once held court in this region, meeting with leaders, showing up at international meetings with his keffiyeh, sometimes in sunglasses even when it was daylight, or with a paramilitary uniform – all part of a style choice very much in line with the 1960s and 1970s that helped form him.

To spotlight that history, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour recently presented this segment: “20 years after Yasser Arafat’s death, we revisit his complex legacy, his impact on the Palestinian quest for statehood, how world leaders reacted to his passing and what it meant for peace.”

What can we conclude looking back at Arafat’s legacy? As noted above, his rise to prominence came against the backdrop of the 1960s and 1970s.

Arafat tried to channel the fervor for “revolution” and “armed struggle” in the region, hoping that the Algerian war that forced the French to leave that country by 1962 would also have headwinds for the Palestinians. Unlike French Algeria, though, the Palestinians were divided and occupied in 1962 by the Egyptians and Jordan.

Initially, the war waged by the Palestinians was against the existence of Israel, not against the “occupation,” because the Palestinian national movement was a tool of countries such as Egypt to destabilize Israel. It wasn’t designed to “liberate” Jerusalem, because Jordan ran eastern Jerusalem and controlled al-Aqsa Mosque at the time.

Only after 1967 did things shift, and Arafat and his movement took on a new look: It claimed to be conducting a struggle against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Arafat had founded Fatah through students and friends he met in Kuwait and other places among the Palestinian diaspora. The movement achieved more success after 1967 when it was actually fighting Israel, such as in clashes at Karameh, Jordan, in 1968.

Destablizing the Middle East

Arafat and his men tried to destabilize the Kingdom of Jordan, even threatening its existence in 1970 during fighting that led to the Jordanian Civil War.

During that era, Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Arafat emerged on the international stage. He appeared in photos with sunglasses on during the day, looking more like a cartel boss than a political leader. But this was the style of the time, however ridiculous, clownish, and thuggish it appears in retrospect.

By 1974, Arafat was speaking at the United Nations. On November 10, 1975, UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.”

Arafat seemed to be winning, even though his movement had caused a war in Jordan and also carried out the brutal Munich Olympics massacre. Books lauding Arafat for his vision appeared, such as Alan Hart’s Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker. When I was in middle school, my social studies teacher, “Mr. P.,” was enthusiastic about the book. I read it a few years later.

By this time, Arafat and his movement hadn’t just destabilized Jordan; after they moved to Lebanon, they also helped destabilize and destroy that country, beginning in 1976 with the Lebanese Civil War.

They caused the Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982, and Israel stayed in Lebanon until 2000. Arafat left Beirut in 1982 for Tunisia, coming to Gaza in 1994 for his triumphant return to what he thought would be a Palestinian state in the making.

If the 1960s milieu made Arafat into a paramilitary “icon” wearing sunglasses and a keffiyeh, it was the end of the Cold War that turned him into an actual leader who was legitimized by the international community.

Arafat returned to the Palestinian territories the same year that South Africa had its first full and free elections with the end of Apartheid. At the time, democracy was sweeping the world. The Berlin Wall was gone. Conflicts were ending around the world. The US was a global hegemon presiding over the new world order.

There were some inklings of the failure to come, such as the Black Hawk Down disaster in 1993, the Rwandan Genocide, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, and al-Qaeda’s attack on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The 1990s, however, gave the Palestinians the chance to create a state in the making. In Gaza, an international airport was built. In Abu Dis, the Palestinians wanted to build a makeshift capital overlooking Jerusalem.

Everything was going well. In May 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanon. Arafat had the chance to build a state. Instead, he chose war. He likely believed that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon meant that if Israel was pushed a little more via violence, it would fold.

In September 2000, he gambled that Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount could be used as a spark. Clashes began in Gaza and spread. The Second Intifada began.

This wasn’t like the First Intifada, which helped bring Arafat from Tunisia to Gaza and helped create the PA. This was bloody, and like the October 7 massacre, it led to disaster for the Palestinians.

By 2002, Israel had reentered many Palestinian cities. The airport in Gaza was in ruins. Arafat died in 2004. He didn’t even get to live to see the Disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Arafat left a chaotic and corrupt PA in the hands of Mahmoud Abbas. Handed a potential win through Disengagement, Abbas fumbled and let Hamas win Palestinian elections. He then let Hamas throw Fatah out of Gaza.

Backed by the US-trained PA Security Forces, Abbas hung on, but his regime was a slowly aging edifice. In Gaza, the UN and NGOs partnered with Hamas; by 2012, Hamas leaders were in Doha, Qatar, being groomed for higher things.

Several wars later, Hamas was ready to launch the October 7 massacre, the goal of which was to end the concept of two states forever and plunge Israel into endless wars so that Hamas could take over the West Bank.

Arafat’s failure to fulfill a vision for the Palestinians in that narrow window of opportunity in the 1990s has allowed Hamas to be a driver of the movement and lead them to disaster.