Homage to Abu Ammar

"The Man Who Made the Palestinian Cause the Biggest Problem in the World
By MIFTAH


It has been exactly one year since Abu Ammar, (or President Yasser Arafat, or, most correctly, Muhammad Abdul Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini), died, leaving bereft and orphaned a nation of stateless Palestinians whose cause he personified and promoted as no one else did. Shortly before his death he was asked by a journalist about his greatest achievement, and he had replied, flashing his trademark face-splitting grin: “We have made the Palestinian case the biggest problem in the world. (…) One hundred and seven years after the Basel Conference, 90 years after the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Israel has failed to wipe us out. We are here, in Palestine, facing them. We are not Red Indians.”

One year after his death, the Palestinian “case” remains one of the biggest problems in the world, and despite their receding hopes of viable statehood in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians still consider, almost to a man, Abu Ammar to have been the person most responsible for making it so. Most continue to think of him as the father of the Palestinian nation, and around the world the obituaries that reported and reflected upon his death referred to him glibly, if not inaccurately, as “Mr. Palestine.” .....read more







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