How did “Yasser Arafat” become an example of compromise in the Palestinian issue?
He was born in Quds in 1929 and went to Cairo to study when he was young. In 1959s, along with several other young people such as Khalil al-Wazir and Salah Khalaf, he founded the Tahrir al-Palestine (Fath) movement to stand against the Zionist occupation. He gradually reached the position of spokesman of this organization led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is a confederation of Palestinian parties and was established in 1964, and became known as the representative of the Palestinian people in international forums and different countries.
** Turning the Islamic issue into a Palestinian issue!
Despite this, Arafat, who was considered to be one of the first generation of Palestinian fighters, had trials and errors that, although they were expensive for the history of Palestine, were a lesson for the younger generations and future fighters of this land. Arafat, who was infatuated with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the late leader of Egypt and the founder of Pan-Arabism, saw the Palestinian issue not as an Islamic issue but as an Arab issue, and his sense of Arab nationalism made him stand on the side of Saddam in the imposed war, and he tried to end the war in the form of a goodwill delegation. A delegation was formed in March of 1959 consisting of the presidents of Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh, Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea, as well as Yasser Arafat and Habib Shatti (Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference) to travel to both countries and make their proposal after hearing the words of the parties. but since none of their proposals satisfied Iran’s demands and mostly satisfied Saddam’s demands, they did not come to fruition.
Arafat was the only leader of an Islamic and Arab country who stood by Saddam Hussein when the Iraqi Baath regime attacked Kuwait in 1990, and this caused his position to decline among Islamic and Arab countries. On the other hand, Arafat tried to separate himself from others by emphasizing the Palestinianness of the Palestinian issue (instead of emphasizing its Islamic nature).
With the defeat of the Ba’ath army in the First Persian Gulf War and the relative weakness of Yasser Arafat in the Arab world, he gradually leaned towards Israel and gave up the struggle, and in 1993, the Oslo Accords between Yasser Arafat and Yasser Arafat, the Prime Minister of Israel at the time, were mediated. US President Bill Clinton signed. Preliminary negotiations about this agreement were held in Oslo, the capital of Norway.
According to this agreement, Arafat recognized the Zionist regime and the plan to form an independent Palestinian government was carried out after the borders were determined, and Yasser Arafat was able to return to Palestine after many years. From 1993 to today, when 30 years have passed since the Oslo 1 agreement, we have witnessed the severe restriction of movement in the occupied areas, the Zionist regime’s control over the natural and vital resources of the Palestinian people, and the failure to prevent the Zionist regime from building settlements.
Of course, Arafat’s compromise continued in the negotiations known as Oslo 2, and in September 1995, he completely deviated from the initial ideas and ideals of forming the Palestine Liberation Organization. Based on this agreement, Arafat pledged to remove the clauses related to the destruction of Israel from the Palestinian National Charter and the statutes of the Palestine Liberation Organization in response to the sovereignty of the self-governing organizations over the cities of Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus, Qalqilya, Ramallah and a part of the city of Hebron.
A man who once believed in an interview with Oriana Fallaci that “Palestine means the land that starts from the Naqba in the north and ends with Aqaba in the south, starts from the Mediterranean coast plus the Gaza strip and ends in the east, which is the Jordan River and the Naqba desert.” Now he handed over Palestine to Israel in exchange for holding a limited area!