Home About us Products Services Contact us Bookmark
:: wikimiki.org ::
Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat (Arabic: ياسر عرفات‎) (August 4 or August 24, 1929 – November 11, 2004), born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (محمد عبد الرؤوف القدوة الحسيني) and also known by the kunya Abu `Ammar (أبو عمّار), was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (1969–2004); President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) (1993–2004); and a co-recipient of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. Nobel Peace Prize] Arafat was a controversial and polarizing figure throughout his lengthy political career. While his supporters viewed him as a heroic freedom fighter who symbolized the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, his opponents often described him as an unrepentant terrorist with a long legacy of promoting violence. Still others accused him of being a deeply corrupt politician or a weak leader who made too many concessions to the Israeli government during efforts to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Early life

Arafat was the fifth or sixth (sources disagree) of seven children. His father was a Palestinian textile merchant and his mother came from a prominent Palestinian family. Arafat claimed to have been born in Jerusalem on August 4, 1929; some of his legal personal documentation states the same. A birth certificate registered in Cairo, Egypt shows August 24, 1929 as his date of birth and Cairo as the place. According to one Arafat biography, this birth certificate was filed in Cairo by his father so Arafat could attend school there. [http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/30_1.html] [http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1994/arafat-bio.html] Arafat was four when his mother died, and he and his father moved to Jerusalem from Cairo, where the family had been living. In Jerusalem, they lived in a house near the Western Wall and the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Temple Mount, a holy site to Jews, Christians and Muslims. At the age of eight, his father re-married and the family moved back to Cairo. The marriage did not last, and when his father married once more, Arafat's sister Inam was left in charge of the upbringing of her siblings. Arafat attended the University of King Fuad I (later renamed Cairo University). He later claimed to have sought to better understand Judaism and Zionism by engaging in discussions with Jews and reading publications by Theodor Herzl and other Zionists. But by 1946 he had become a Palestinian nationalist and was procuring weapons in Egypt to be smuggled into Palestine in the Arab cause.[http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/fyi/school.tools/profiles/Yasser.Arafat/student.storypage.html] During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Arafat left the university and, along with other Palestinians, sought to enter Palestine to fight for Palestinian independence. He was disarmed and turned back by Egyptian military forces that refused to allow the poorly trained partisans to enter the war zone. Arafat felt that he had been "betrayed by these [Arab] regimes". After returning to the university, Arafat joined the Muslim Brotherhood and served as president of the Union of Palestinian Students from 1952 to 1956. By 1956, Arafat graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and served as a second lieutenant in the Egyptian Army during the Suez Crisis.[http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761560094/Arafat_Yasir.html] Later in 1956, at a conference in Prague, he donned the keffiyeh, the traditional chequered head-dress which was to become his emblem. Arafat's younger brother Dr. Fathy Arafat, founded the Palestinian Red Crescent and was involved in the humanitarian aspect of the conflict.

Fatah and the PLO

After Suez, Arafat moved to Kuwait, where he found work as a civil engineer and eventually set up his own contracting firm. Arafat had decided that the best way for Palestinians to gain control of Palestine was for them to fight and not rely on support from Arab governments. In Kuwait in 1959, with the help of friends Yahia Ghavani and Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) [http://www.palestineremembered.com/al-Ramla/al-Ramla/Story175.html], together with a group of refugees from Gaza, Arafat founded one of the groups that became al-Fatah. According to journalist John Cooley, the name means "victory" and is also an acrostic taken from the initials, read backwards, of Harahkat al-Tahrir al Filistini (H-T-F, letters are reversed in FaTaH due to the negative meaning of the H-T-F root in Arabic.), meaning the Palestine Liberation Movement. Fatah dedicated itself to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and the destruction of the state of Israel. Arafat worked hard in Kuwait to establish the groundwork for Fatah's future financial support by enlisting contributions from the many Palestinians working there, who gave generously from their high salaries in the oil industry (ibid., p.91). Fatah's first operation was an unsuccessful attempt to blow up an Israeli water pump station in 1965. After the Six-Day War, Arafat is said to have escaped Israel by crossing the River Jordan dressed as a woman carrying a baby. In 1968, Fatah was the target of an Israeli Defense Force operation in the Jordanian village of Al-Karameh ("honor" in Arabic language) in which 150 Palestinians and 29 Israeli soldiers were killed. Despite the high Palestinian death toll, Fatah considered themselves victorious because of the Israeli army's eventual withdrawal. The battle was covered in detail by Time magazine, and Arafat's face appeared on the cover, bringing the wider world their first image of the man. Amid the post-war environment, the profiles of Arafat and Fatah were raised by this important turning point, as he came to be regarded as a national hero who dared confront Israel. Many young Palestinians joined as the ranks and armaments of Fatah swelled. By the late 1960s, Fatah had come to dominate the PLO, and at the Palestinian National Congress in Cairo on February 3, 1969 Arafat was appointed Palestinian Liberation Organization leader, replacing Ahmad Shukeiri. Arafat became commander-in-chief of the Palestinian Revolutionary Forces two years later and, in 1973, the head of the PLO's political department.

Jordan

In the 1960s tensions between Palestinians and the Jordanian government had greatly increased; heavily armed Palestinian resistance elements (fedayeen) had created a virtual "state within a state" in Jordan, eventually controlling several strategic positions in Jordan, including the oil refinery near Az Zarq. Jordan considered this a growing threat to its sovereignty and security and attempted to disarm the Palestinian militias. Open fighting erupted in June of 1970. Other Arab governments attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution, but continuing fedayeen actions in Jordan (such as the destruction by the PFLP, on September 12, of three international airliners hijacked and held in Dawson's Field in Zarqa) prompted the Jordanian government to take action to regain control over its territory. On September 16, King Hussein declared martial law. On that same day, Arafat became supreme commander of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), the regular military force of the PLO. In the ensuing civil war, the PLO had the active support of Syria, which sent a force of around 200 tanks into Jordan to aid them. The fighting was mainly between the Jordanian army and the PLA; the U.S. Navy dispatched the Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean and Israel deployed troops to aid Hussein, if necessary. By September 24, the Jordanian army achieved dominance and the PLA agreed to a series of ceasefires [http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/bravo/blacksept1970.htm]. See also History of Jordan and Black September.

Lebanon

Following the expulsion from Jordan, Arafat relocated the PLO to Lebanon. Because of Lebanon's weak central government, the PLO was able to operate virtually as an independent state. The PLO mounted intermittent cross-border attacks against Israeli targets, including civilians, from there. In September 1972, the Black September group killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. A number of sources, including Mohammed Daoud and Benny Morris, have stated that Black September was an arm of Fatah used for more militant operations. The killings were internationally condemned and Arafat publicly disassociated himself and the PLO from such attacks. In 1973-4, Arafat closed Black September down, ordering the PLO to withdraw from acts of violence outside Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, because overseas attacks attracted too much bad publicity. The Fatah movement continued to launch attacks against Israeli civilians and the security forces within the West Bank and Gaza Strip; moreover, in the late 1970s numerous leftist Palestinian organizations appeared which carried out attacks against civilian targets both within Israel and outside of it. Israel claimed that Arafat was in ultimate control over these organizations and hence had not abandoned terrorism. Arafat denied responsibility for terrorist acts committed by these groups. In the same year, Arafat became the first representative of a nongovernmental organization to address a plenary session of the UN General Assembly, and Arab heads of state recognized the PLO as "the sole legitimate spokesman of the Palestinian people." In his UN address, Arafat condemned Zionism, but said, "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." His speech increased international support of the Palestinian cause. The PLO was admitted to full membership in the Arab League in 1976. The PLO played an important part in the Lebanese Civil War. After having taken control over West Beirut, and under seige by the Israeli army, Arafat declared Beirut to be the "second Stalingrad" (Fisk, Pity the Nation). Beirut ended up in much ruin as a result of subsequent Israeli artillery and aerial bombardment with close to 17,000 civilians dead. During the Civil War, Arafat allied the PLO with Lebanese Muslim groups, however, fearing a loss of power Syria's President Assad switched sides, and sent in his army to help the right-wing Christian Phalangists. The Civil War's first phase ended for Arafat with the siege and fall of the Palestinian refugee camp of Tal al-Zaatar. Arafat himself narrowly escaped with assistance from the Saudis and Kuwaitis. During the Israeli siege of Beirut (1982), the United States and European powers brokered a deal guaranteeing safe passage for Arafat and the PLO to exile in Tunis. Arafat actually returned to Lebanon a year after he was evicted from Beirut, this time establishing himself in Tripoli. Instead of being expelled by Israel, this time Arafat was expelled by a fellow Palestinian working for Hafez al-Assad. Arafat did not return to Lebanon personally after this second expulsion, though many Fatah fighters did.

Tunisia

In September 1982, during the Israeli offensive into Lebanon, the Americans and Europeans brokered a cease-fire deal in which Arafat and the PLO were allowed to leave Lebanon; Arafat and his leadership eventually arrived in Tunisia, which remained his center of operations up until 1993. Arafat again narrowly survived an Israeli attack in 1985. In Operation Wooden Leg, IAF F-15s bombed his headquarters in Tunis leaving 73 people dead; Arafat had gone out jogging that morning. During the 1980s, Arafat received assistance from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which allowed him to reconstruct the badly-battered PLO. This was particularly useful during the First Intifada in December, 1987. Although the Intifada was a spontaneous uprising against Israeli occupation, within weeks Arafat was attempting to direct the revolt, and Israelis believe that it was mainly because of Fatah forces in the West Bank that the civil unrest was able to continue for the duration. On November 15, 1988, the PLO proclaimed the independent State of Palestine, a government-in-exile for the Palestinians which laid claim to the whole of Palestine as defined by the British Mandate of Palestine, rejecting the idea of partition. In a December 13, 1988 address, Arafat accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242, promised future recognition of Israel, and renounced "terrorism in all its forms, including state terrorism" [http://mondediplo.com/focus/mideast/arafat88-en]. Arafat's December 13 statement was encouraged by the U.S. administration, which insisted on the recognition of Israel as a necessary starting point in the Camp David peace negotiations. Arafat's statement indicated a shift from one of the PLO's primary aims — the destruction of Israel (as in the Palestinian National Covenant) — towards the establishment of two separate entities, an Israeli state within the 1949 armistice lines and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, on April 2, 1989, Arafat was elected by the Central Council of the Palestine National Council (the governing body of the PLO) to be the president of the proclaimed State of Palestine. In 1990 Arafat married Suha Tawil, a Palestinian Orthodox Christian working for the PLO in Tunis, who converted to Islam before marrying him. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3965541.stm] During the 1991 Madrid Conference, Israel conducted open negotiations with the PLO for the first time. Prior to the Gulf War of 1991, Arafat opposed the U.N. attack on Iraq, alienating many of the Arab states, and leading to the U.S. disregarding his claims of being a partner for peace. Arafat narrowly escaped death again in 1992 as his aircraft crash-landed in the Libyan desert during a sandstorm. The pilot and several passengers were killed and Arafat received several broken bones and other injuries.

Palestinian Authority and "peace negotiations"

Iraq, and Arafat during the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993]] In the early 1990s Arafat engaged the Israelis in a series of secret talks and negotiations that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords calling for the implementation of Palestinian self rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five year period. Prior to signing the accords, Arafat as Chairman of the PLO and as its official representative signed two letters renouncing violence and officially recognizing Israel on September 9, 1993. In return Prime Minister Rabin, on behalf of Israel, officially recognized the PLO. (See: Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization letters of recognition.) The following year Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat returned to Palestine as a hero to some but a traitor and collaborator to others. In 1994, Arafat moved to the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) — the provisional entity created by the Oslo Accords. On July 24 1995, his wife Suha gave birth to a daughter, who was named Zahwa after his deceased mother. On January 20, 1996, Arafat was elected president of the PA, with an overwhelming 88.2 percent majority (the only other candidate was Samiha Khalil) [http://www.pna.gov.ps/Government/gov/Elections_in_Palestine.asp]. Independent international observers reported the elections to have been free and fair. However, because Hamas and other opposition movements chose not to participate in the presidential election, the choices were limited. The following elections scheduled for January 2002 were later postponed; the stated reason being inability to campaign due to the emergency conditions imposed by the al-Aqsa intifada and Israel Defense Force incursions and restrictions on freedom of movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. After 1996, Arafat's title as Palestinian Authority leader was "head" (Arabic Ra'is). Israel and the U.S. interpret the title as "chairman" while Palestinians and the U.N. translate the title as "president". The mass media uses both terms. In mid-1996, Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister of Israel. Palestinian-Israeli relations grew even more hostile as a consequence of continued conflict. Netanyahu allegedly sought to obstruct the transition to Palestinian statehood outlined in the Israel-PLO accord. In 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton intervened, arranging meetings with the two leaders. The resulting Wye River Memorandum of 23 October 1998 detailed the steps to be taken by the Israeli government and PA to complete the peace process. Arafat continued negotiations with Netanyahu's successor, Ehud Barak, at the Camp David 2000 Summit. Due partly to his own politics (Barak was from the leftist Labor Party, whereas Netanyahu was from the rightist Likud Party) and partly due to immense pressure placed by American President Bill Clinton, Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in the majority of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip with an outlying suburb of East Jerusalem as its capital. The final proposal proffered by Barak would have meant establishment of Palestinian State on 90-91% of the West Bank and the whole of the Gaza Strip. Israel would annex the resting 9-10% of the West Bank encompassing large settlement blocs, in exchange for land in the Negev. In addition, under the Israeli proposal, Israel would retain some control of the Palestinian state's borders, customs, and defense. Also included in the offer was a return of a number of refugees and compensation for the rest. In a move widely criticized and even by a member of his negotiating team and Cabinet, Nabil Amr, Arafat rejected Barak's offer and refused to make a counter-offer. When the Al-Aqsa Intifada, or Second Palestinian Intifada, was launched (2000-present), the peace process completely collapsed. After the start of the Second Intifada, Arafat's wife moved to live with her mother and daughter in Paris.

Political survival and marginalization

Arafat's long personal and political survival was taken by most Western commentators as a sign of his mastery of asymmetric warfare and his skill as a tactician, given the extremely dangerous nature of politics of the Middle East and the frequency of assassinations. Some commentators believe his personal survival was largely due to Israel's fear that he could become a martyr for the Palestinian cause if he was to be assassinated or even arrested by Israel. Others believe that Israel kept Arafat alive because they feared Arafat less than Hamas and the other Islamist movements gaining support over Arafat's secular organization. The complex and fragile web of relations between the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states also contributed to Arafat's longevity as Palestinian leader. Arafat's ability to adapt to new tactical and political situations, was perhaps exemplified by the rise of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad organizations, Islamist groups espousing rejectionist opposition to Israel and employing new tactics such as suicide bombing, often intentionally targeting non-military targets, such as malls and movie theaters, to increase the psychological damage. In the 1990s, these groups seemed to threaten Arafat's capacity to hold together a unified secular nationalist organization with a goal of statehood. They appeared to be out of Arafat's influence and control and were actively fighting with Arafat's Fatah group. Some allege that activities of these groups were tolerated by Arafat as a means of applying pressure on Israel (see PLO and Hamas.) Some Israeli government officials opined in 2002 that the Fatah's faction Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades began attacks on Israel to compete with Hamas. On May 6, 2002, the Israeli government released a report, based in part on documents captured during the Israeli occupation of Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, with copies of papers signed by Arafat authorizing funding for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades' activities. In March 2002, the Arab League made an offer to recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli retreat from all territories captured in the Six-Day War and statehood for Palestine and Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Supporters of this declaration saw this offer, which included recognition of Israel by the Arab states, as a historic opportunity for comprehensive peace in the region, while critics of this offer say that it would constitute a heavy blow to Israel's security, while not even guaranteeing Israel the cessation of suicide bombing attacks. Israel ignored what it deemed to be a facile offer. Shortly afterward, attacks carried out by Palestinian militants killed more than 135 Innocent Israeli civilians. Ariel Sharon, who had previously demanded that Arafat speak out strongly in Arabic against suicide bombings, declared that Arafat "assisted the terrorists and made himself an enemy of Israel and irrelevant to any peace negotiations". Israel then launched a major military offensive into the West Bank (see "Operation Defensive Shield".) Operation Defensive Shield Persistent attempts by the Israeli government to identify another Palestinian leader to represent the Palestinian people failed; and Arafat was enjoying the support of groups that, given his own history, would normally have been quite wary of dealing with him or of supporting him. Marwan Barghouti emerged as a leader during the Al-Aqsa intifada but Israel had him arrested and sentenced to 4 life terms. Arafat was finally allowed to leave his compound on May 3, 2002 after intensive negotiations led to a settlement[http://english.people.com.cn/200205/03/eng20020503_95112.shtml]; six militants wanted by Israel, which considers them terrorists, who had been holed up with Arafat in his compound, would not be turned over to Israel, but neither would they be held in custody by the Palestinian Authority. Rather, a combination of British and American security personnel would ensure that the wanted men remained imprisoned in Jericho. With that, and a promise that he would issue a call in Arabic to the Palestinians to halt attacks on Israelis, Arafat was released. He issued such a call on May 8, 2002, but, as was the case before, his public call to halt attacks was ignored, mainly due to the fact that he secretly supported the attacks, a fact well known by all the palestinian militant organizations who did not take Arafat's call seriously. On July 18 2004, in an interview in Le Figaro, U.S. President George W. Bush dismissed Arafat as a negotiating partner: "The real problem is that there is no leadership that is able to say 'help us establish a state and we will fight terror and answer the needs of the Palestinians'". [http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=6674] Arafat had a mixed relationship at best with the leaders of other Arab nations. At various times he had come under withering criticism from Arab leaders and press. In the last few years growing disenchantment with Arafat and his peers had surfaced within the general Arab press. However, he remained by far the most popular Arab leader among the general populace. The most frequent criticism of Arafat was that he was corrupt to the detriment of the Palestinian people. Arafat's support from Arab leaders tended to increase whenever he was pressured by Israel; for example, in 2003 when Israel declared it had taken the decision, in principle, to remove him from the Israeli-controlled West Bank. On September 22, 2003, The Wall Street Journal published article by former chief of Romanian intelligence Ion Mihai Pacepa "The KGB’s Man" [http://www.jpef.net/dec03/KGB%20s%20man.pdf PDF] alleging that he was trained by the KGB, which "in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader."

Financial dealings

In August 2002, the Israeli Military Intelligence Chief claimed that Arafat's personal wealth was USD $1.3 billion [http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=197188&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0], though he provided no substantiation for this claim. The U.S. business magazine "Forbes" [http://www.forbes.com/global/2001/1001/015.html] ranked Arafat as sixth on its 2003 list "Kings, Queens and Despots" [http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0317/134.html], estimating his personal wealth to "at least $300 million", without indicating its source for this claim. In 2003 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted an audit of the Palestinian Authority and stated that Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account controlled by Arafat and the PA Chief Economic Financial Advisor. The IMF did not claim that there were any improprieties and it specifically stated that most of the funds have been used to invest in Palestinian assets, both internally and abroad. [http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1958.shtml] In 2003 a team of American accountants — hired by Arafat's own finance ministry — began examining Arafat's finances. The team claimed that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion — with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands. The head of the investigation stated that "although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public". Though Arafat has always lived modestly, Dennis Ross, former Middle East negotiator for Presidents Bush and Clinton, stated that Arafat's "walking-around money" financed a vast patronage system. According to Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank official who Arafat appointed finance minister in 2002, Arafat's commodity monopolies could accurately be seen as gouging his own people, "especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral." [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/07/60minutes/main582487.shtml] According to Hanan Ashrawi, a former member of Arafat's cabinet "Getting Mr. Arafat to hand over the holdings was like pulling teeth. Mr. Arafat gave in to pressure from aid donors such as the European Union and from his finance minister, Salam Fayyad, the IMF's former representative in the territories. They demanded that Mr. Arafat turn over the investments as a condition of further aid." [http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=ag2fQ5pMZXc8] An investigation by the European Union into claims that EU funds were misused by the Palestinian Authority has found no evidence that funds were diverted to finance terrorist activities. The EU "remains convinced that deepening reform in the PA and improving its financial management and audit capacities is the best preventive strategy against the misuse of funds and corruption. The reform of the financial management of the PA is the objective of several key conditions attached to the EU financial assistance." [http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/mepp/faq/index.htm#Allegations%20of%20misuse%20of%20EU%20funds] Claims by unnamed sources in the PA Finance Ministry stated that Arafat's wife, Suha, receives a stipend of $100,000 each month from the PA budget. In an interview with the London-based newspaper Al Hayat, Mrs. Arafat accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of spreading rumors about money-laundering involed the transfer of funds to herself to distract media attention away from corruption allegations against himself. In October 2003, French government prosecutors opened a money-laundering probe of Suha Arafat after Tracfin alerted the prosecutors to untaxed transfers of nearly $1.27 million each with some regularity from Switzerland to Mrs. Arafat's accounts in Paris.

Illness and death

First reports of Arafat's treatment by his doctors for what his spokesman said was 'flu' came on October 25, 2004 after he vomited during a meeting. His condition deteriorated in the following days and he became unconscious for 10 minutes on October 27. Following visits by other doctors, including teams from Tunisia, Jordan, and Egypt, and agreement by Israel not to block his return, Arafat was taken on October 29 aboard a French government jet to the Percy military hospital near Paris. According to one of his doctors, Arafat was suffering from Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), an immunologically-mediated decrease in the number of circulating platelets to abnormally low levels. On November 3 he lapsed into a gradually deepening coma. In the ensuing days, Arafat's health was the subject of wild speculation. Various sources speculated that Arafat was comatose, in a "vegetative state", or dead. Palestinian authorities and Arafat's Jordanian doctor denied reports that Arafat was brain dead and had been kept on life support. A controversy erupted between officials of the Palestinian Authority and Suha Arafat, Yasser Arafat's wife. On November 8, officials of the Palestinian Authority travelled to France to see Yasser Arafat. Suha Arafat stated "They are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive". Palestinian officials were reported to regret that the news about Yasser Arafat was "filtered" by his wife.[http://www.courrierinternational.com/AFP/depeche.asp?obj_id=041109112713.50yc4qq0] French law forbids physicians from discussing the condition of their patients with anybody with the exception, in case of grave prognosis, of close relatives. ([http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnArticleDeCode?commun=&code=CSANPUNL.rcv&art=L1110-4 Code of Public Health, L1110-4]) Accordingly, all communications concerning Yasser Arafat's health had to be authorized by Arafat's wife. On November 9, at 10 AM, chief surgeon Estripeau of Percy reported that Arafat's condition had worsened, and that he had fallen into a deeper coma. On November 10, a "high religious dignitary" visited Arafat and declared that it was out of the question to disconnect Arafat from life support machines, since, according to him, such an action would be prohibited by Islam. Arafat was pronounced dead at 02:30 UTC on November 11 at age 75. The exact cause of his illness is unknown and controversial. Sheikh Taissir Tamimi, who held a vigil at his bedside described the scene, "It was a very painful scene. There was blood everywhere on his face. The blood was coming from every possible place. My first reaction when I saw the scene was that I didn't understand what was going on. I closed my eyes, and I started reading from the Koran..." When his death was announced, the Palestinian people went into a state of mourning, with Qur'anic mourning prayers emitted from loudspeakers from mosques, and tires burning in the street as a sign of mourning. In September 2005, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that French experts could not determine the cause of Arafats death. The paper further quoted an Israeli AIDS expert who claimed that Arafat bore all the symptoms of AIDS. Another "senior Israeli physician" claimed it was "a classic case of food poisoning", probably caused by a meal eaten four hours before he fell ill on October 12 that may have contained a toxin such as ricin rather than the standard bacterial poisoning. However, in the same week that the Haaretz report was published, the New York Times published a separate report also based on access to Arafat's medical records which claimed that it was highly unlikely that Arafat had AIDS or food poisoning. Both Haaretz and the New York Times further speculated that the cause of death may have been an infection of an unknown nature or origin. Arafat's personal physician, Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, lamented the fact that the leader's wife Suha had refused an autopsy, which would have answered many questions in the case. [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/622612.html Haaretz: Part 1] [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/622613.html Part 2] [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/622614.html Part 3] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4225332.stm].

Aftermath

Israel refused Arafat's wish to be buried in or near the Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem citing widespread security concerns. [http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/11/7/113931.shtml][http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0411120332nov12,1,3231913.story?ctrack=1&cset=true] Following a state funeral in Cairo, attended by many Arab leaders, Arafat was "temporarily" laid to rest on November 12 within his former headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank watched by a large crowd. On November 16, 2004, the Canard Enchaîné newspaper reported alleged leaks of information unnamed medical sources at Percy hospital having had access to Arafat and his medical file. According to the newspaper, the doctors at Percy hospital suspected, from Arafat's arrival, grave lesions of the liver responsible for an alteration of the composition of the blood, thus Arafat was placed in a hematology service. Leukemia was soundly ruled out. According to the same source, the reason why this diagnosis of cirrhosis could not be made public was that, in the mind of the general public, cirrhosis is generally associated with the consequences of alcohol abuse – even though the diagnosis was not of an alcoholic cirrhosis and Arafat did not consume any alcohol, there would have probably been rumors. The source then explained that Arafat's conditions of life during the last three years did not improve the situation: Arafat did not get health care appropriate to his state. Thus, according to the source, the probable causes of the disease are multiple; Arafat's coma was a consequence of the worsened cirrhosis. Finally, he had a brain haemorrhage. [http://news.tf1.fr/news/monde/0,,3185912,00.html] The French newspaper Le Monde quoted doctors as saying that he suffered from "an unusual blood disease and a liver problem". [http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6841700] Paris deputy Claude Goasguen asked for a parliamentary inquiry commission on the death of Arafat in an attempt to quell rumors. [http://news.tf1.fr/news/monde/0,,3185912,00.html] On November 17, the French government insisted that there was no evidence Arafat had been poisoned, otherwise a criminal investigation would have necessarily been opened. After Arafat's death, the French Ministry of Defence said that Arafat's medical file would only be transmitted to his next of kin. It was determined that Arafat's nephew, Nasser al-Kidwa, was a close enough relative, thus working around Suha Arafat's mutism on her husband's illness. On November 22, Nasser al-Kidwa was given a copy of Arafat's 558-page medical file by the French Ministry of Defense.[http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=272727] A controversy erupted around Arafat's death certificate, which listed Jerusalem as his birth place. This was the location specified by the official foreign documents that were shown to the French ministry of foreign affairs when Arafat's wife acquired French citizenship. [http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-mideast-arafat-france.html][http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=254483][http://www.primo-europe.org/documents.php?numdoc=Do-837641817] Israel asked French officials to provide proof that Arafat was born in Jerusalem,[http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/11/29/arafat-certificate-france-israel-041129.html] and the Simon Wiesenthal Center called on France "to investigate the circumstances of the false and incomplete registration of Arafat's death certificate, to correct the erroneous details of his birthplace, adding the truth of his parentage and the cause of his death."[http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=253162&ct=294116] So far, no party to the controversy has brought the case to a court to ask for a rectification of the certificate (see French Civil Code, L99-101). Upon Arafat's death, Speaker Rawhi Fattuh succeeded Arafat as interim President of the Palestinian Authority. PLO Secretary-General Mahmoud Abbas was selected Chairman of the PLO and Foreign Minister Farouk Kaddoumi became head of Fatah. Ahmed Qurei remained as Prime Minister and took additional security responsibilities. Abbas won the January 2005 presidential election by a comfortable margin, solidifying himself as the successor to Arafat as leader of the Palestinians.

Bibliography


- Aburish, Said K., Arafat: From Defender to Dictator, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1998. ISBN 1582340498
- Gowers, Andrew and Tony Walker, Arafat: The Biography, Virgin Books, 2005. ISBN 1852279249
- Hart, Alan, Arafat, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1994. ISBN 0283062207
- Rubin, Barry M. and Judith Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0195166892
- Rubinstein, Danny and Dan Leon The Mystery of Arafat, Steerforth Press, 1995. ISBN 1883642108
- Wallach, Janet and John Wallach, Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder, Carol Pub Group, 1990. ISBN 9993251305

See also


- 10 Agorot controversy
- Nobel Prize controversies

External links

Biographies and profiles


- [http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,781566-1,00.html A Life in Retrospect: Yasser Arafat] Time magazine retrospective
- [http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/1994/arafat-bio.html Biography of Yasser Arafat] from the Nobel e-Museum
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3102112.stm BBC profile of Yasser Arafat]
- [http://www.ict.org.il/articles/yasir_arafat.htm ICT - Yasir Arafat: Psychological Profile and Strategic Analysis]
- [http://customwire.ap.org/specials/interactives/arafat_flash/arafat.swf Interactive biography of Arafat] from the Associated Press
- [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1333366,00.html Life and times of Yassir Arafat], [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1333352,00.html Profile: Yassir Arafat] from Times Online, UK
- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1348450,00.html Obituary] from the Guardian
- [http://www.p-p-o.com/president/english/defultE.htm Biography] from presidential site
- [http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Yassir_Arafat_1929-2004.asp Yassir Arafat: 1929-2004] HonestReporting.com biography

Other External Links


- [http://www.meforum.org/article/645 Arafat's Swiss Bank Account] by Issam Abu Issa former chairman of the Palestine International Bank published in the Middle East Quarterly
- [http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/0317/014.html Auditing Arafat] from Forbes magazine, March 17, 2003
- [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/632976.html The beautiful life without Arafat] by Gideon Levy, published in Haaretz August 10, 2005

Directories


- [http://search.looksmart.com/p/browse/us1/us317836/us552286/us526499/us526506/us527080/us10231562/us10006906 LookSmart - Yasser Arafat] directory category
- [http://dmoz.org/Regional/Middle_East/Palestinian_Territory/Society_and_Culture/Politics/Politicians/Yasser_Arafat/ Open Directory Project - Yasser Arafat] directory category
- [http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Regions/Middle_East/Countries_and_Regions/Palestinian_Authority/Community/People/ Yahoo! - Yasser Arafat] directory category

Notes


- Some sources use the term Chairman rather than President; the Arabic word for both titles is the same. See President of the Palestinian Authority for further information.
- Cooley, J.K., Green March Black September, Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1973. ISBN 0714629871 Arafat, Yasser Arafat, Yasser Arafat, Yasser Arafat, Yasser Arafat, Yasser Arafat (Abu Amar), Yasser zh-min-nan:Yasser Arafat ko:야세르 아라파트 ms:Yasser Arafat ja:ヤーセル・アラファート th:ยัสเซอร์ อาราฟัต

Arabic language

The Arabic language (; , less formally, ) is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab world and is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world. Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century and is the liturgical language of Islam.

Literary and Modern Standard Arabic

The term "Arabic" may refer either to literary Arabic, which no Arab speaks as a mother tongue, or Modern Standard Arabic or to the many spoken varieties of Arabic commonly called "colloquial Arabic." Arabs consider literary Arabic as the standard language and tend to view everything else as mere dialects. Literary Arabic, (Literally: "the most eloquent Arabic language" — ) refers both to the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East and to the more archaic language of the Qur'an. (The expression media here includes most television and radio, and all written matter, including all books, newspapers, magazines, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.) "Colloquial" or "dialectal" Arabic refers to the many national or regional dialects/languages derived from Classical Arabic, spoken daily across North Africa and the Middle East, which constitute the everyday spoken language. These sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are not typically written, although a certain amount of literature (particularly plays and poetry) exists in many of them. They are often used to varying degrees in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows. Literary Arabic or classical Arabic, is the official language of all Arab countries and is the only form of Arabic taught in schools at all stages. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of Diglossia -the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of whatever nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught literary Arabic (to an equal or lesser degree). This diglossic situation facilitates code switching in which a speaker switches back and forth unaware between the two varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. In instances in which Arabs of different nationalities engage in conversation only to find their dialects mutually unintelligible (e.g. a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), both should be able to code switch into Literary Arabic for the sake of communication. Since the written Arabic of today differs from the written Arabic of the Qur'anic era, it has become customary in western scholarship and among non-Arab scholars of Arabic to refer to the language of the Qur'an as Classical Arabic and the modern language of the media and of formal speeches as Modern Standard Arabic. Arabs, on the other hand, often use the term to refer to both forms, thus placing greater emphasis on the similarities between the two. The difference between Arabic of the Qur'anic era and today's Classical Arabic is only in the degree of eloquance. The vocabulary, the syntatic and grammatical rules are the same. Quite a few English words are ultimately derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish, among them every-day vocabulary like sugar (sukkar), cotton (qutn) or magazine (). More recognizable are words like algorithm, algebra, alchemy, alcohol, azimuth, nadir, and zenith (see List of English words of Arabic origin). The Maltese language spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta is the only surviving European language to derive primarily from Arabic (a North African dialect), though it contains a large number of Italian and English borrowings.

Arabic and Islam

It is sometimes difficult to translate Islamic concepts, and concepts specific to Arab culture, without using the original Arabic terminology. The Qur'an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deem it impossible to translate in a way that would adequately reflect its exact meaning—indeed, until recently, some schools of thought maintained that it should not be translated at all. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are too specific to translate in one phrase. While Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of salah), it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Oriental (Sephardic) Jews, and smaller sects such as Iraqi Mandaeans. Even so, a majority of the world's Muslims do not actually speak Arabic, but only know some fixed phrases of Arabic, such as those used in Islamic prayer. However, to counteract this, there is great encouragement for non-Arabic-speaking Muslims to learn the language.

Dialects

See Varieties of Arabic for a fuller overview. "Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the Maghreb dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Maltese, though descended from Arabic, is considered a separate language. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding Maghrebis (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern—especially Egyptian—films and other media). One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fiih, and North African kayen all mean "there is", and all come from Arabic (yakuun, fiihi, kaa'in respectively), but now sound very different. The major groups are:
- Egyptian Arabic (Egypt) Considered the most widely understood and used "second dialect"
- Maghreb Arabic (Algerian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic and western Libyan)
- Levantine Arabic (Western Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and western Jordanian, Cypriot Maronite Arabic)
- Iraqi Arabic or Gulf Arabic (Iraqi, Eastern Syrian, Kuwaiti, Saudi Arabian, Persian Gulf coast from Iraq to Oman including much of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, and minorities on the other side) Other varieties include:
- (in Mauritania and Western Sahara)
- Andalusi Arabic (extinct, but important role in literary history)
- Maltese
- Sudanese Arabic (with a dialect continuum into Chad)
- Hijazi Arabic (West Cost of Saudi Arabia, Northern Saudi Arabia, eastern Jordan, Western Iraq)
- Najdi Arabic (Najd region of central Saudi Arabia)
- Yemeni Arabic (Yemen to southern Saudi Arabia)

Phonology

The consonant phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Standard Arabic, which has only three vowels, in short and long variants, namely and . Naturally, considerable allophony occurs.

Consonants

Standard Arabic has 28 consonants: See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart. # is pronounced as by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced as . # is pronounced only in , the name of God, i.e. Allah. # is usually a phonetic approximant. # In many varieties (if not most), are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).

Emphatic Consonants

The consonants traditionally known as "emphatic" are either velarised or pharyngealised . In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter e.g. is written ‹D›; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it e.g. ‹ḍ›.

Long Consonants

Vowels and consonants can be (phonologically) short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which marks lengthened consonants. Such consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: e.g. qabala "he received" and qabbala "he kissed".

Syllable Shape

Arabic has two kinds of syllable: open syllables (CV) and (CVV) - and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC) and (CVCC). Every syllable begins with a consonant - or else a consonant is borrowed from a previous word through elision – especially in the case of the definite article THE, al (used when starting an utterance) or _l (when following a word), e.g. baytu –l mudiir “house (of) the director”, which becomes bay-tul-mu-diir when divided syllabically. By itself, definite mudiir would be pronounced .

Word Stress

Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length and syllable shape, and correct word stress aids intelligibility. In general, "heavy" syllables attract stress (i.e. syllables of longer duration - a closed syllable or a syllable with a long vowel). In a word with a syllable with one long vowel, the long vowel attracts the stress (e.g. ki-'taab and ‘kaa-tib). In a word with two long vowels, the second long vowel attracts stress (e.g.ma-kaa-'tiib). In a word with a "heavy" syllable where two consonants occur together or the same consonant is doubled, the (last) heavy syllable attracts stress (e.g. ya-ma-’niyy, ka-'tabt, ka-‘tab-na, ma-‘jal-lah, ‘mad-ra-sah, yur-‘sil-na). This last rule trumps the first two: ja-zaa-i-‘riyy. Otherwise, word stress typically falls on the first syllable: ‘ya-man, ‘ka-ta-bat, etc. The Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, however, has some idiosyncrasies in that a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, so that mad-‘ra-sah carries the stress on the second-to-last syllable, as does qaa-‘hi-rah.

Dialectical Phonologies

In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghreb dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian) distinguish between and . Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (principally Levantine and Egyptian) and as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while those with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as in dialects without interdental fricatives. Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render Standard (a voiceless uvular stop): it retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen and Morocco (and among the Druze), while it is rendered in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan) and as a glottal stop in many prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Thus, Arabs instantly give away their geographical (and class) origin by their pronunciation of a word such as qamar "moon": , or .

Grammar

See Arabic grammar

Alphabet

Arabic alphabet

Main article: Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (which variety - Nabataean or Syriac - is a matter of scholarly dispute), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (Maghrebi) and Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like other Semitic languages, is written from right to left.

Calligraphy

See Arabic calligraphy for a fuller overview. After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Kufic font
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. Two of the current masters of the genre are Hassan Massoudy and [http://arabworld.nitle.org/gallery.php?module_id=7 Khaled Al Saa’i].

Arabic using the Latin alphabet

See Arabic transliteration and Arabic Chat Alphabet for more information. There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. The more scientific standards allow the reader to recreate the exact word using the Arabic alphabet. However, these systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks, which may be difficult to pronounce at first sight. Other, less scientific, systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems. During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script. To handle those Arabic letters that do not have an approximate equivalent in the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. E.g., the Latin numeral "3" is used to represent the Arabic letter "ع" ("ayn"). There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet.

See also


- Learn Standard Arabic WikiBook
- Arabist
- Arabic alphabet
- Arabic calligraphy
- Semitic languages
- Arabic literature
- The Maltese language is closely related to Arabic
- altahmam -- One of the ten non-English words that were voted hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company
- Common phrases in various languages
- Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

External links


- [http://arabic-media.com/ Arabic-Media] on-line access to Arabic newspapers, radio, and television
- [http://st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_00-index_El-Fehres.html Learn Arabic language online with audio pronunciation] from [http://St-Takla.org St. Takla Egyptian Church]
- [http://www.nicoweb.com/sirpus/learn%20arabic%20course%20mp3.htm Arabic Writing and Reading with MP3]. Arabic Writing and Reading Course Online with MP3 audio.
- [http://pince31.free.fr/lang/arabic/liens.htm Links to learn Arabic language with online course]
- [http://www.madinaharabic.com Arabic language learning course with audio]
- [http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=6173 "Antonyms in Arabic are a strange phenomenon" by Tamim al-Barghouti]
- [http://arabworld.nitle.org/texts.php?module_id=1&reading_id=17 "The Development of Classical Arabic" by Kees Versteegh]
- [http://arabworld.nitle.org/audiovisual.php?module_id=1&selected_feed=118 Wellesley College Professor of Arabic on the forms and dialects of the language]
- [http://www.uga.edu/islam/arabic_windows.html Multilingual Computing in Arabic with Windows, major word processors, web browsers, Arabic keyboards, and Arabic transliteration fonts]
- [http://www.gomideast.com/arabic/index.htm gomideast - Learning to Speak Arabic phrases]
- [http://language-directory.50webs.com/languages/arabic.htm List of online Arabic-related resources] Web references and examples:
- [http://transliteration.org/quran/Pronunciation/Letters/TashP.htm Arabic language pronunciation applet] with audio samples
- [http://www.sunna.info/teaching/ Learn Arabic]
- [http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1289272 E2 article]
- [http://www.sprachprofi.de.vu/english/ar.htm Sprachprofi]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Arabic-english/ Arabic - English Dictionary]: from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition.
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=arb SIL's Ethnologue]
- [http://www.nitle.org/arabworld/texts.php?module_id=1&reading_id=113 Dialects of Arabic]
- [http://www.muftah-alhuruf.com Muftah-Alhuruf.com]: Write and send Arabic emails without having an Arabic keyboard or operating system. Arabic languages samples:
- [http://www.language-museum.com/a/arabic.php Arabic]
- [http://www.language-museum.com/a/arabic-chadian-spoken.php Arabic Chadian Spoken]
- [http://www.language-museum.com/a/arabic-judeo-iraqi.php Arabic Judeo Iraqi]
- [http://www.language-museum.com/a/arabic-north-levantine-spoken.php Arabic North Levantine Spoken]
- [http://arabworld.nitle.org/texts.php?module_id=1&reading_id=17 "The Development of Classical Arabic" by Kees Versteegh]
- Category:Arab ko:아랍어 ms:Bahasa Arab ja:アラビア語 simple:Arabic language th:ภาษาอาหรับ

August 4

August 4 is the 216th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (217th in leap years), with 149 days remaining.

Events


- 1265 - The Battle of Evesham of the Second Barons' War is fought in Worcestershire, with the army of future King Edward I of England defeating the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester and killing de Montfort and many of his allies. This is sometimes considered the death of chivalry in England.
- 1578 - Battle of Al Kasr al Kebir - Moroccans defeat Portuguese. King Sebastian of Portugal is defeated and killed in North Africa, leaving his elderly uncle, Cardinal Henry, as his heir. This initiates a succession crisis in Portugal.
- 1693 - Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of Champagne.
- 1704 - During the War of the Spanish Succession an Anglo-Dutch force seizes the rock of Gibraltar.
- 1735 - Freedom of the press: New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger is acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he published was true.
- 1753 - George Washington, then a young Virginia planter, becomes a Master Mason, the highest basic rank in the secret fraternity of Freemasonry.
- 1789 - The feudal system is abolished in France.
- 1790 - A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
- 1821 - Atkinson & Alexander publish the Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper.
- 1824 - Battle of Cos fought between Turks and Greeks.
- 1854 - The Hinomaru is established as the official flag to be flown from Japanese ships.
- 1873 - Indian Wars: While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, clash for the first time with the Sioux (near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed).
- 1892 - The family of Lizzie Borden is found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.
- 1902 - Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opens.
- 1914 - World War I: Germany invaded Belgium; in response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States proclaims neutrality.
- 1944 - Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.
- 1947 - The Supreme Court of Japan is established.
- 1964 - American civil rights movement: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
  - Vietnam War: United States destroyers USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy are attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga sinks two, possibly three North Vietnamese gunboats.
- 1969 - Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, US representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.
- 1975 - The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages included the U.S. consul and the Swedish charge d'affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya.
- 1977 - US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
- 1983 - Thomas Sankara becomes president of Upper Volta.
- 1983 - New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield accidentally killed a seagull during a baseball game and was charged by police for his "act of cruelty to animals". His manager Billy Martin quipped, "It's the first time he's hit the cutoff man."
- 1984 - The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
- 1985 - In one of the most exciting days in sports, Tom Seaver of the Chicago White Sox won his 300th game and Rod Carew of the California Angels picked up his 3000th hit. It marked the only day in which two men reached baseball's three biggest milestones in the same day.
- 1987 - The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to "fairly" present controversial issues.
- 1991 The Greek cruise ship Oceanos sinks off the coast of South Africa.
- 1993 - A federal judge sentences LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.
- 1995 - Operation Storm begins in Croatia.
- 1997 - 185,000 Teamsters union United Parcel Service drivers walk off the job.
- 2005 - Prime Minister Paul Martin announces that Michaëlle Jean will be Canada's 27th — and first black — Governor General.

Births


- 1222 - Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford, English soldier (d. 1262)
- 1290 - Duke Leopold I of Austria (d. 1326)
- 1521 - Pope Urban VII, (d. 1590)
- 1604 - François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, French writer (d. 1676)
- 1701 - Thomas Blackwell, Scottish classical scholar (d. 1757)
- 1719 - Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German minerologist and geologist (d. 1767)
- 1721 - Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford, English politician (d. 1803)
- 1792 - Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (d. 1822)
- 1805 - William Rowan Hamilton, Irish mathematician (d. 1865)
- 1834 - John Venn, British mathematician (d. 1923)
- 1840 - Richard von Krafft-Ebing, German psychiatrist (d. 1902)
- 1859 - Knut Hamsun, Norwegian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1952)
- 1899 - Ezra Taft Benson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1994)
- 1900 - Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Queen Mother of the United Kingdom (d. 2002)
- 1901 - Louis Armstrong, American musician (d. 1971)
- 1904 - Witold Gombrowicz, Polish novelist and dramatist (d. 1969)
- 1906 - Eugen Schuhmacher, German zoologist (d. 1973)
- 1908 - Kurt Eichhorn, German conductor (d. 1994)
- 1909 - Glenn Cunningham, American politician (d. 2004)
- 1910 - William Schuman, American composer (d. 1992)
- 1912 - Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, Russian mathematician, physicist, philosopher, and mountaineer (d. 1999)
- 1912 - Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat
- 1913 - Robert Hayden, American poet (d. 1980)
- 1921 - Maurice Richard, Canadian hockey player (d. 2000)
- 1927 - Jess Thomas, American tenor (d. 1993)
- 1929 - Yasser Arafat, Palestine leader (d. 2004)
- 1929 - Kishore Kumar, Indian singer and actor (d. 1987)
- 1936 - Assia Djebar, Algerian writer and filmmaker
- 1937 - David Bedford, English musician
- 1942 - David Lange, Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 2005)
- 1943 - Bjørn Wirkola, Norwegian ski jumper
- 1944 - Richard Belzer, American actor and comedian
- 1947 - Klaus Schulze, German composer
- 1955 - Billy Bob Thornton, American actor and writer
- 1958 - Mary Decker, American athlete
- 1960 - Dean Malenko, American professional wrestler
- 1960 - José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain
- 1961 - Barack Obama, American politician
- 1962 - Roger Clemens, baseball player
- 1967 - Mike Marsh, American athlete
- 1968 - Marcus Schenkenberg, Swedish model
- 1970 - Michael DeLuise, American actor
- 1971 - Jeff Gordon, American race car driver
- 1972 - Stefan Brogren, Canadian actor
- 1974 - Cristian González, Argentine footballer
- 1977 - Luis Boa Morte, Portuguese footballer
- 1978 - Kurt Busch, American race car driver
- 1992 - Dylan and Cole Sprouse twin actors

Deaths


- 1060 - King Henry I of France (b. 1008)
- 1265 - Killed in the Battle of Evesham:
  - Hugh le Despencer, 1st Baron le Despencer (b. 1223)
  - Henry de Montfort (b. 1238)
  - Peter de Montfort
  - Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester (b. 1208)
- 1306 - King Wenceslaus III of Bohemia (b. 1289)
- 1338 - Thomas of Brotherton, 1st Earl of Norfolk, son of Edward I of England (b. 1300)
- 1526 - Juan Sebastián Elcano, Spanish explorer (b. 1476)
- 1578 - King Sebastian of Portugal (b. 1554)
- 1578 - Thomas Stucley, English adventurer
- 1598 - William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, English statesman (b. 1520)
- 1612 - Hugh Broughton, English scholar (b. 1549)
- 1639 - Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Mexican dramatist
- 1727 - Victor-Maurice, comte de Broglie, French general (b. 1647)
- 1741 - Andrew Hamilton, American lawyer
- 1784 - Giovanni Battista Martini, Italian musician (b. 1706)
- 1792 - John Burgoyne, British general (b. 1723)
- 1795 - Timothy Ruggles, American-born Tory politician (b. 1711)
- 1875 - Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (b. 1805)
- 1938 - Pearl White, American actress (b. 1889)
- 1957 - Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa, President of Brazil (b. 1869)
- 1976 - Roy Herbert Thomson, Lord Thomson of Fleet, Canadian publisher (b. 1894)
- 1977 - Edgar Douglas Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, English physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1889)
- 1981 - Melvyn Douglas, American actor (b. 1901)
- 1998 - Yuri Artyukhin, cosmonaut (b. 1930)
- 1999 - Victor Mature, American actor (b. 1915)
- 2001 - Lorenzo Music, American actor, writer, and producer (b. 1937)
- 2003 - Frederick Chapman Robbins, American pediatrician and virologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1916)

Holidays and observances


- Roman Catholicism - Saint John Vianney – Patron Saint of Priests
- Burkina Faso - Anniversary of the Revolution
- Cook Islands - Constitution Day (celebrations begin on the last Friday in July and last up to 2 weeks.)
- El Salvador - Transfiguration Bank Holiday
- Ancient Egypt - Jubilation of the Heart of Re

External links


- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/4 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050804.html The New York Times: On This Day] ---- August 3 - August 5 - July 4 - September 4 -- listing of all days ko:8월 4일 ja:8月4日 simple:August 4 th:4 สิงหาคม

August 24

August 24 is the 236th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (237th in leap years), with 129 days remaining.

Events


- 49 BC - Julius Caesar's general Gaius Curio is defeated in the Second Battle of the Bagradas River by the Numidians under Attius Varus and King Juba of Numidia. Curio is slain in battle.
- AD 79 - Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash.
- 410 - The Visigoths under Alaric sack Rome for three days.
- 1215 - Pope Innocent III declares the Magna Carta invalid.
- 1349 - Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz because they are blamed for the bubonic plague.
- 1391 - Jews massacred in Palma de Mallorca.
- 1456 - The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.
- 1511 - Alfonso de Albuquerque of Portugal conquers the Sultanate of Malacca.
- 1572 - Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre: On the orders of king Charles IX of France, a massacre of Huguenots (French Protestants) begins.
- 1608 - The first official British representative to India lands in Surat.
- 1662 - Act of Uniformity requires England to accept the Book of Common Prayer.
- 1682 - William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.
- 1690 - Calcutta, India is founded.
- 1814 - British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings.
- 1821 - The Treaty of Córdoba is signed in Córdoba, now in Veracruz, Mexico, concluding the Mexican War of Independence from Spain.
- 1831 - Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle.
- 1847 - Charlotte Brontë finishes Jane Eyre.
- 1853 - Potato chips are first prepared.
- 1857 - The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in U.S. history.
- 1858 - In Richmond, Virginia, 90 blacks are arrested for learning.
- 1891 - Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.
- 1909 - Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.
- 1912 - Alaska becomes a United States territory.
- 1914 - World War I: German troops capture Namur.
- 1929 - Turkey and Persia sign a friendship treaty.
- 1931 - France and the Soviet Union sign a neutrality/no attack treaty.
- 1931 - Resignation of the United Kingdom's Second Labour Government. Formation of the UK National Government.
- 1932 - Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).
- 1936 - The Australian Antarctic Territory is created.
- 1942 - World War II: The Battle of the East Solomon Islands. Japanese aircraft carrier Ryuho is sunk.
- 1944 - World War II: French and Allied troops start the attack on Paris.
- 1949 - The treaty creating NATO goes into effect.
- 1950 - Edith Sampson becomess the first black U.S. delegate to the UN.
- 1954 - The Communist Control Act goes into effect. The American Communist Party is outlawed.
- 1954 - Getúlio Dornelles Vargas, president of Brazil, commit suicide and is succeeded by João Café Filho.
- 1960 - A temperature of −88°C (−127°F) is measured in Vostok, Antarctica — a world-record low.
- 1963 - The 200-metre freestyle is swum in less than 2 minutes for the first time by Don Schollander (1:58).
- 1968 - France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.
- 1968 - France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.
- 1971 - Pink Floyd performs their most famous concert, in an abandoned Pompeii amphitheatre on the 1892nd anniversary of the infamous disappearance of Pompeii.
- 1979 - In Central Park, New York a concert is given by cars.
- 1981 - Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.
- 1989 - Colombian drug barons declare "total war" on the Colombian government.
- 1989 - Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose is banned from baseball for gambling by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti
-