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Kompass

Thinkers and political figures

Photograph of Yasser Arafat wearing his keffiyeh, 1996.

Portrait: Dan Hadani Archive, National Library of Israel, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Yasser Arafat

Country
Palestine
Era
1929–2004
Tradition
Palestinian nationalism

Founder of Fatah and chairman of the PLO for thirty-five years, who moved the Palestinian movement from armed struggle to negotiation, signed the Oslo Accords, and died besieged in Ramallah with no state achieved.

01

Documented positions

Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.

  • Founded Fatah and built the PLO into the recognised representative of the Palestinian people
  • Directed and sanctioned armed operations, including attacks on civilians, during the 1960s and 1970s
  • Accepted UN resolutions 242 and 338 in 1988, implicitly recognising Israel within pre-1967 borders
  • Signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, establishing the Palestinian Authority with limited self-government
  • Rejected the terms offered at Camp David in 2000, disputing the extent of territory and the status of Jerusalem
  • Governed the Palestinian Authority through patronage, with elections held once in 1996 and not repeated
  • Shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres
02

Where it sits on each dimension

Personal liberty

25

Evidence: Documented

Nation and the world

92

Evidence: Well documented

Religion and the state

40

Evidence: Documented

Power and its limits

20

Evidence: Well documented

Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Wealth and inequality, The state in the economy, Tradition and change, Environment and growth, Crime and punishment

Sources

  • Yasser Arafat, Address to the United Nations General Assembly · 1974
  • Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography · Oxford University Press · 2003

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