Arafat, the Man and the Myth

Yasir Arafat soared to worldwide notoriety in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab countries as spokesman and leader of the militant Palestine Liberation Organization. Since then he has been one of the prime actors in the increasingly bloody Middle East conflict. Maligned by most in the West, he has become a legendary hero in the Arab world.
Yet even among Arabs very little is known about him. His past, his motivations, and his personal aspirations are deliberately veiled. The self-cultivated mystery surrounding Arafat has served him well, for it has romantically installed him in the minds of many as a modern-day Arab Robin Hood, struggling to redress the injustices of history. To many others, of course, he is merely a bloodthirsty demagogue.
Whatever sympathies or hatreds Arafat arouses, he is a dominant influence on the military and political balance in the Middle East. It is time for us to know more about the real Arafat.