Home > War in the Persian Gulf > Yasir Arafat Biography

Born October 29, 1929

Cairo, Egypt

Palestine Liberation Organization leader who supported Iraq during the 1991

Persian Gulf War

"We can only be in the camp hostile to Israel and its imperialist allies, who have mobilized all their sophisticated war machine not to come to anybody's aid but to protect their own interests."

Yasir Arafat in Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Yasir Arafat, the longtime leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is one of the most controversial political figures in the world. Supporters view him as a hero in the struggle to create an independent Palestinian state and a statesman in the efforts to forge a lasting peace in the Middle East. But critics view him as a terrorist who is determined to destroy the Jewish state of Israel.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Arafat and the PLO...