November 9, 2004 | Memo

Backgrounder: Yasser Arafat

Jonathan L. Snow                                                                                                                                                                                     November 9, 2004

Key Facts

 

Corruption

 

Terrorism

·          SwissAir flight 330 was bombed in mid-flight by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in February 1970.  47 people were killed.

·          September 1972, 11 Israeli athletes were killed at the Munich Olympics by the Black September subgroup of the PLO.

·          March 1973, Black September terrorists took over the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, executing two American officials (U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel and Charge d’ Affairs George Curtis Moore) and a Belgian official.  According to a former NSA analyst, the NSA has recordings of Arafat personally ordering the operation and the murder of the diplomats.  These tapes have never been released or authenticated, but there is no doubt that Arafat pulled the strings behind Black September.

·          In 1974, members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the third largest PLO group, attacked a school in Ma’alot, killing 27 people and wounding 134 others, mostly students.

·          October 1985, terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Front, part of the PLO, hijacked the Italian cruise ship the Achille Lauro and executed wheelchair-bound American Leon Klinghoffer.

·          Since the launch of the second intifada in September 2000, Arafat-linked groups have been responsible for scores of terrorist attacks against innocent civilians.  Documents captured by the Israelis show that Arafat and his deputies personally authorized payments to suicide terrorists.

 

Political Record in the Middle East

·          After the 1967 war, the PLO set up bases in Jordan from which it launched attacks against Israel.  The actions of the PLO caused discord amongst the different groups in Jordan, subverting the government and leading King Hussein to decide that he had to break the power of the PLO or risk losing his kingdom to Arafat.  He chose to attack Arafat’s forces and Palestinian refugee camps, resulting in “Black September” in 1970.   After that, the PLO relocated to Lebanon, where it already had a powerbase thanks to the Cairo Agreement signed in 1969, an agreement that paved the way for the Lebanese civil war.

·          Arafat created a new terrorist base in Lebanon from which he continued to launch attacks against Israel.  Israel eventually responded in 1982 with an invasion of Lebanon, forcing the PLO to relocate once again to Tunis.

·          Arafat backed Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979.

·          Arafat backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, one of the only leaders in the world to do so.  He continued to work with Saddam, including providing intelligence to the Iraqi dictator about Iraqi opposition groups, until Saddam was removed from power by Coalition forces.

 

Broken Commitments