A hardy perennial
MICHAEL WIDLANSKI
Jewish Renaissance Media
Surviving is nothing new for Yasser Arafat, who just turned 72.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, before the Oslo Accords, death stalked him and his entourage like a long afternoon shadow on a partly cloudy day, always felt but not always seen. Yet, Muhammad Rauf al-Quda - Arafat's real name - managed to crawl out from under the shadow of death.
He walked away from the Israeli siege of his Beirut headquarters and the destruction of his military base in southern Lebanon in 1982, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally ordered that Arafat not be killed by Israeli sharp-shooters who had gotten the Palestinian leader in their sights.
He moved north, and in 1983, he survived attempts on his life by Syrian President Hafez Assad (who died last year), who had set up a rival Palestinian leader, Abu Musa, to try to liquidate Arafat in northern Lebanon.
Arafat took his command post to distant Tunisia. From there he was taken by surprise by the 1987-88 uprising in Gaza and the West Bank, "The intifada," led by a new generation of local leaders who were as disappointed with Arafat's leadership as they were angry with Israeli military rule.
Despite his surprise, Arafat not only recovered his composure but also his leadership role, climbing on the intifada bandwagon back to political prominence, watching as his old nemesis King Hussein - whose country he had tried to conquer in the "Black September" of 1970 - ignominiously withdrew all Jordanian claims to the West Bank.
Even the United States renewed its courtship of the PLO, beginning a dialogue in December 1988.
But in his distant base in Tunisia, "Abu Amaar" - Arafat's "kunya" or nickname - was far from safe.
In the span of three years, his two deputies and closest friends "Abu Iyad" (Salah Khalaf) and "Abu Jihad" (Khalil al-Wazir) were liquidated, the first by his own bodyguard and the second by Israeli commandos led by Moshe "Boogie" Yaalon, the current deputy army chief of staff.
And in 1991, the hand of fate struck as Arafat's plane crashed in the Libyan desert. Both pilots died, but not Arafat, although he bears scars from the incident.
Today the septuagenarian Abu Amaar talks with a strong tremble in his lips, and his hands shake all the time.
Dr. Ahmad Tibi, an Israeli Arab gynecologist who has long been an advisor to Arafat, says the PA leader suffers from sub-cranial bleeding from the plane crash, but other observers suggest Arafat has Parkinson's Disease and other debilitating and life-threatening ailments.
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