Yasir+Arafat

 Arafat was a Palestinian born in 1929 and moved to Jerusalem at a young age. He attended Cairo University, but was more into the politics and military strategies of the Palestinians. After college, he moved to Kuwait. He and a few other Palestinians there formed their own guerrilla group called al-Fatah in the 1950s. “Fatah” means “conquest” and stands for Movement for the Liberation of Palestine. In 1967, Fatah joined the PLO and dominated the scene. Fatah was famous for its guerrilla attacks on Israel, from Jordan in the beginning, then eventually from Lebanon. Fatah was affiliated with communism, and therefore the USSR. They receive weapons and support from them, as well as Syria, who was allied with the USSR. While Arafat and Fatah were technically allied with communism, Arafat was not committed to those ideals. Fatah solely exists for the purpose of freeing Palestine. Fatah was only concerned with Palestinian nationalism. Arafat used Fatah as a means to promise and take action on getting a state for the Palestinians as they had no nation post WWI and WWII.
 * al-Fatah: **

To read about current al-Fatah politics [|click here].

 Rubin, Barry, and Judith Colp Rubin. //Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography//. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. //Questia Online Library//. Web. 6 Sept. 2009. .