Among them was the leading figure of Ali Hassan Salameh, nicknamed the " Red Prince ," the wealthy, flamboyant son of an upper-class family, and commander of Force 17, Yasser Arafat's personal security squad.

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.

Israel claimed that some 60 PLO members were killed, including several leaders of Force 17, and several of Arafat's bodyguards.

Arafat's statements were greeted with approval by the US administration, which had long insisted on these statements as a necessary starting point for official discussions between the US and the PLO.

According to Abu Iyad, two attempts were made on Arafat's life by the Israeli Mosaad and the Military Directorate in 1970.

They appeared to be out of Arafat's influence and control, and were actively fighting with Fatah.

Initially, Arafat's medical records were withheld by senior Palestinian officials, and Arafat's wife refused an autopsy.

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.

" Yasser Arafat's statements in Geneva a month later were accepted by the United States as sufficient to remove the ambiguities it saw in the declaration and to fulfill the longheld conditions for open dialogue with the United States.

Yasser Arafat's PLO officially executed 118 Palestinians who were thought to be collaborating with Israel.

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.

Arafat's powers were divided among his officials, with Mahmoud Abbas elected head of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Rawhi Fattuh sworn in as acting president of the Palestinian Authority.

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.

Some of these refugee camps, overcrowded and filled with angry refugees, helped seed the beginnings of Yasser Arafat's Fatah group ; guerrilla attacks on Israel were launched from some of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon.

On November 15, following Arafat's death, Israeli forces launched an incursion in Jenin to kill him, but he evaded them ; in the raid, nine Palestinians were killed, including four civilians and his deputy, " Alaa ".

This appointment and corruption claims against Arafat's family were partially the catalyst for intense armed conflict in the streets of Gaza between Palestinian ' militants ' of the al-Aqsa Martyrs ' Brigade group and fighters loyal to Chairman Arafat's Fatah.

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 June 2012, after a 9-month investigation launched by Al Jazeera, traces of the radioactive poison polonium were found on Arafat's belongings, strongly increasing suspicions that he was poisoned.

" When Arafat's death was announced, the Palestinian people went into a state of mourning, with Quranic mourning prayers emitted from mosque loudspeakers, and tires were burned in the streets.

Thus, according to the source, the probable causes of the disease were multiple ; Arafat's coma was a consequence of the worsened cirrhosis.

In 2012, high levels of radioactive toxin were found in Arafat's belongings.

On 8 August 2012, Swiss experts were invited to the West Bank to test Yasser Arafat's remains for possible poisoning.

According to Israel Radio, a former Palestinian intelligence officer, attorney Fahmi Shabana, says that Yasser Arafat's political rivals were responsible for his death, and that he was poisoned with polonium.

A spokesman for the Institut de Radiophysique stressed that the " clinical 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 ", and that " the only way to confirm the findings would be to exhume Arafat's body to test it for polonium-210.

Following their defeat in the Jordanian civil war, thousands of Palestinian militiamen regrouped in Lebanon, led by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, with the intention of replicating the modus operandi of attacking Israel from a politically and militarily weak neighbour.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

However in 2003, a team of American accountants – hired by Arafat's own finance ministry – began examining Arafat's finances ; this team reached a different conclusion.

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.

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

In July 2012 Al Jazeera reported that tests carried out by the Institute of Radiation Physics at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland as part of a nine-month investigation found traces of polonium in quantities much higher than could occur naturally on Arafat's personal belongings.

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.

Barghouti campaigned against corruption in Arafat's administration and human rights violations by its security services, and he established relationships with a number of Israeli politicians and members of Israel's peace movement.

This culminated with the group entering Yassir Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, at the time besieged by Israeli forces.

Naji al-Ali a popular cartoon artist in the Arab world, loved for his defense of the ordinary people, and for his criticism of repression and despotism by both the Israeli military and Yasser Arafat's PLO, was murdered for refusing to compromise with his conscience.

After Yasser Arafat's death Mahmoud Abbas was seen, at least by Fatah, as his natural successor.