During the early 1950s, Arafat adopted the name Yasser, and in the early years of Arafat's guerrilla career, he assumed the nom de guerre of Abu Ammar.

The DFLP continued to cautiously support Arafat's attempts to open negotiations with Israel, but this was not uncontroversial within the membership.

'" When describing his views of the peace process among Arab leaders and in the media of the Arab world, Arafat's rhetoric became noticeably more bellicose than it was when among Western leaders and media outside of the Arab world.

Arafat's father battled in the Egyptian courts for 25 years to claim family land in Eqypt as part of his inheritance but was unsuccessful.

Arafat's sister Inam stated in an interview with Arafat's biographer, British historian Alan Hart, that Arafat was heavily beaten by his father for going to the Jewish quarter in Cairo and attending religious services.

" Aburish writes that it was on Arafat's orders that Fatah remained, and that the Jordanian Army agreed to back them if heavy fighting ensued.

The battle was covered in detail by Time, and Arafat's face appeared on the cover of the 13 December 1968 issue, bringing his image to the world for the first time.

Arafat's top aide Abu Iyad vowed to stay neutral and opposed an alliance with Saddam ; On 17 January 1991, Abu Iyad was assassinated by the Abu Nidal Organization.

She was named Zahwa after Arafat's deceased mother.

Arafat's long personal and political survival was taken by most Western commentators as a sign of his mastery of asymmetric warfare and his skill as a tactician, given the extremely dangerous nature of politics of the Middle East and the frequency of assassinations.

In 1976, Abu Sa ' ed, a Palestinian traitor-agent who had been working for the Mossad for four years, was enlisted in a plot to put poison pellets that looked like grains of rice in Arafat's food.

Arafat's ability to adapt to new tactical and political situations was perhaps tested by the rise of the Hamas and PIJ organizations, Islamist groups espousing rejectionist policies with Israel.

In August 2002, the Israeli Military Intelligence Chief alleged that Arafat's personal wealth was in the range of USD $ 1. 3 billion.

First reports of Arafat's treatment by his doctors for what his spokesman said was the " flu " came on 25 October 2004, after he vomited during a meeting.

When Arafat's death was announced, the Palestinian people went into a state of mourning, with Qur ' anic mourning prayers emitted from mosque loudspeakers throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and tires burned in the streets.

However, several other sources including the Institute of Radiation Physics and The New York Times refuted that claim, insisting that Arafat's record indicated that it was highly unlikely that the cause of his death was AIDS.

Arafat's personal doctor Ashraf al-Kurdi and aide Bassam Abu Sharif maintained that Arafat was poisoned, possibly by thallium.

However, a spokesman for the Institute of Radiation Physics stressed that the " symptoms described in Arafat's medical reports were not consistent with polonium-210 and that conclusions could not be drawn as to whether the Palestinian leader was poisoned or not.

The next day, Arafat's body was flown from Paris aboard a French Air Force transport plane to Cairo, Egypt for a brief military funeral there, attended by several heads of states, prime ministers and foreign ministers.

In 2002, the compound was partly demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces and Arafat's building was cut off from the rest of the compound.

In his book Stateless, Salah Khalaf ( Abu Iyad ), Arafat's chief of security and a founding member of Fatah, wrote that: " Black September was not a terrorist organization, but was rather an auxiliary unit of the resistance movement, at a time when the latter was unable to fully realize its military and political potential.

Mohammed Abdel Al, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group, claimed responsibility for Arafat's assassination, saying it killed Arafat to punish him for corruption after the Palestinian security forces had taken no action against him.

In Yasser Arafat's September 9, 1993 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, as part of the first Oslo accord, Arafat stated that " The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.

On 6 May 2002, the Israeli government released a report, based in part on documents captured during the Israeli raid of Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, which included copies of papers signed by Arafat authorizing funding for al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades ' activities.

According to Salam Fayyad — a former World Bank official whom Arafat appointed Finance Minister of the PNA in 2002 — Arafat's commodity monopolies could accurately be seen as gouging his own people, " especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral.

French President Jacques Chirac stood alone beside Arafat's coffin for about ten minutes in a last show of respect for Arafat, whom he hailed as " a man of courage ".

On 10 November 2007, prior to the third anniversary of Arafat's death, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas unveiled a mausoleum for Arafat near his tomb in commemoration of him.

Upon Arafat's death, PLC Speaker Rawhi Fattouh succeeded Arafat as interim President of the PNA.

The adoption of the program, under pressure from Arafat's Fatah faction and some minor groups ( e. g. DFLP, al-Sa ' iqa ) led many hard-line groups to break away from the Arafat and the mainstream PLO members, forming the Rejectionist Front.

Secret negotiations with Yasser Arafat's PLO organization led to the Oslo Accords, which won Peres, Rabin and Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize.

Overall, 68 % of the Palestinian public thought Arafat's positions on a final agreement at Camp David were just right and 14 % thought Arafat compromised too much while only 6 % thought Arafat had not compromised enough.

In it, Feith argued that the Oslo Accords were being undermined by Yasser Arafat's failure to fulfill peace pledges and Israel's failure to uphold the integrity of the accords it had concluded with Arafat.

Erekat was also, along with Arafat and Faisal Husseini, one of the three high-ranking Palestinians who asked Ariel Sharon not to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque in September 2000, an event which allegedly sparked off the Second Intifada. He also acted as Yasser Arafat's English interpreter.

One key allegation which emerged against the PA after Arafat's death was that over the years Arafat and Fatah officials had received billions of dollars in aid from foreign nations and organizations and had never used this money to develop Palestinian society.

He was replaced with Arafat's cousin, Musa Arafat, a move which did little to restore public confidence in Police.

Arafat's oldest son, Manhal, and three bodyguards were kidnapped by the gunmen who killed Arafat.

In 1954, he came into contact with Yasser Arafat in Gaza ; al-Wazir would become Arafat's right-hand man later in his life.

Al-Wazir and Arafat were either considering uniting Fatah with Orabi's faction — the Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Palestine — or winning Orabi's support against Arafat's rivals within the Fatah leadership.

In 2004, Dahlan was assumed to have been behind week-long unrest in Gaza following the appointment of Arafat's nephew Moussa Arafat as head of Gaza police forces.

However, Palestinian authorities and Arafat's Jordanian doctor denied reports that Arafat was brain dead and had been kept on life support.

It was determined that Arafat's nephew and PNA envoy to the UN, Nasser al-Qudwa, was a close enough relative, thus working around Suha Arafat's silence on her husband's illness.

Nasser al-Qudwa was given a copy of Arafat's 558-page medical file by the French Ministry of Defense.