Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (; 24 August 192911 November 2004), popularly known as
Yasser Arafat or by his
kunyaA kunya is a teknonym, the name of an adult derived from their child, especially their eldest son, in Arabic names.A kunya is expressed by the use of abū or umm in a genitive construction, i.e "father of" or "mother of" as a honorific in place of or alongside given names in the Arab world and the...
Abu Ammar , was a
PalestinianThe Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
leader and a Laureate of the
Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
. He was Chairman of the
Palestine Liberation OrganizationThe Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...
(PLO), President of the
Palestinian National AuthorityThe Palestinian Authority is the administrative organization established to govern parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip...
(PNA), and leader of the
FatahFataḥ is a major Palestinian political party and the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization , a multi-party confederation. In Palestinian politics it is on the left-wing of the spectrum; it is mainly nationalist, although not predominantly socialist. Its official goals are found...
political party, which he founded in 1959. Arafat spent much of his life fighting against
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in the name of Palestinian
self-determinationSelf-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
.
