Yasser Arafat Essays

Yasser Arafat Essays Yasser Arafat Essay Yasser Arafat Essay The interests of the people of Palestine had all along been protected by Yasser Arafat. A very important contribution of Yasser Arafat consisted in drawing the attention of the world to the interests of the Palestinians. It can be construed that he was a true messiah of the Palestinians due to the fact that his was the only voice that conveyed their plight to the rest of the world, when the status of the Palestinians was at its nadir. This represented a stage in the development of the Palestinian nation, when Palestinians were considered to be nothing better than criminals . The loss of the Fatah party at the hustings to the Hamas indicates that Arafat’s death was a serious blow to the partys popularity. This political debacle was further aided by the fact that Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas was his antithesis. Political observers like Khaled Duzdar, analyst at the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, had observed the success of Hamas as a result of the failures of Fatah. A number of these failures have been attributed to the failure of Arafat as an able administrator and the failure of his government to curb corruption, indolence in discharging the duties of public administration and the failure to create public good . Despite these drawbacks the fact remains that Arafat succeeded in establishing the state of Palestine and was instrumental in providing an identity to the dispersed Palestinians. The Palestine Liberation Organisation or the P. L. O. under the domination and control of Fatah, according to Arafat, was the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO was secular and did not allow Hamas, the fundamentalist Islamic party, to take part in. However, after the demise of Arafat, the successors in the party failed to maintain its integrity. This brought about divisions in the party as the internal conflicts increased. The beneficiary of these internal conflicts was the Hamas . The reasons that brought about Arafat’s death were not made public by the French doctors who attended upon him when he had been admitted for a stroke in the hospital. The doctors were unable to diagnose the health problem that hastened his death. On the 11th of November, 2004 Arafat died at the age of 75 in a French hospital. A few of Arafat’s followers still believe that their leader was poisoned by Israeli agents. However, it was reported by the New York Times that the medical reports did not establish any possibility of poisoning. Further the newspaper announced that medical experts had examined the reports on its behalf to establish that Arafat had not succumbed to AIDS. Moreover, Arafat’s personal physicians conducted exhaustive diagnoses that failed to detect the source of infection which had caused the bleeding disorder that had escalated the severity of the fatal stroke. Initially Arafat was treated for reduced platelet count in his blood and during the course of treatment his health condition worsened. He was shifted to a French military hospital near Paris where he became comatose which proved to be fatal . The actual reason for Arafat’s death was not disclosed to the public by his wife Suha and the Palestinian authorities delivered contradictory statements. Ashraf Kurdi, the personal physician of Arafat, stated that evidence of AIDS was found but this was not mentioned in the medical records. Even the test performed to detect AIDS was not described. Kurdi further added that Arafat was injected with the HIV virus to camouflage the symptoms of poisoning .