Word: yasir
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...President Hafiz al-Assad (the current president's father), convinced his regime was about to fall to the Islamic opposition, ordered his Special Forces to level Hama. Some 35,000 people were killed, most of them hostages. In the aftermath, what surprised and shook Assad was his discovery that Yasir Arafat and the PLO, then based in Lebanon, were behind the arming and training of Hama's Muslim Brothers. Assad promised himself one thing: He would never allow Lebanon to fall into hostile foreign hands. It is what the Syrians call a "red line," and I would imagine...
Even if Hamas does not change, Hamas’ victory has already begun to transform the Fatah Party, a welcome development. Under Yasir Arafat and recently Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah Party presided over one of the most corrupt and incompetent organizations in the world. Arafat used the Palestinian Authority treasury as his personal cashbox to buy loyalty and to support a maze of security services. It is estimated that Arafat and his corrupt cronies pocketed almost half of the seven billion dollars in foreign aid contributed to the Palestinian Authority. Sadly, only ten percent of the Palestinian state budget ever...
While emphasizing looking away from the past and toward the future, he said the death of Palestinian Authority Leader Yasir Arafat last month gives the U.S. government “a golden opportunity” to change the deteriorating view of its policies in the Middle East. He said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s recent decision to withdraw from the Gaza region provides the U.S. another important opportunity: if Gaza could be portrayed as a model state, Zinni hypothesized, “it could create stability and prosperity for a large number of Palestinians...
...Yasir Arafat was not the first despot to use and praise brutal violence to boost his people’s self-perception; in recent memory, Hitler and Stalin particularly stand out as dictators who complimented promises of renewed national greatness with campaigns of utter human destruction. The difference is that while Europeans have since reassessed these despots, such reassessment seems unlikely among Palestinians. This is especially true so long as even the Harvard-educated among them continues to refer to Arafat affectionately as a “brother” with whom he was “madly in love...
...meaning of Yasir Arafat’s death to the Palestinians was best witnessed at his burial Friday in the West Bank. Heaving, chaotic throngs of mourners seemingly devoured Arafat’s flag-draped coffin, returning full-circle the leader who had emerged from their midst to raise and carry the Palestinian flag of resistance and nationalist aspiration for forty years. Working ceaselessly, often in exile from his native land, Arafat stubbornly represented his people and their cause and won them a hard-fought war for international legitimacy and recognition. Today the Palestinian national cause stands as a pressing...