WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.859 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening 00:00:02.859 --> 00:00:06.139 a file that is, let's just say it's heavy. We're 00:00:06.139 --> 00:00:08.160 tackling a figure who didn't just participate 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:10.859 in the history of the 20th century. He, I mean, 00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:13.000 he grabbed it by the lapels and shook it. He 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:15.039 really did. Yeah. And depending on who you ask, 00:00:15.080 --> 00:00:16.620 and you mean this literally, right? Which side 00:00:16.620 --> 00:00:19.679 of a border you're standing on. This man is either 00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:23.100 a Che Guevara style icon of liberation. Right. 00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:26.480 A revolutionary hero. Or he's the absolute godfather 00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:30.460 of modern political violence. It is so rare to 00:00:30.460 --> 00:00:33.859 find a single human being who holds such diametrically 00:00:33.859 --> 00:00:36.299 opposed titles. We are talking about a man who 00:00:36.299 --> 00:00:38.460 won the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, he stood on 00:00:38.460 --> 00:00:41.000 the White House lawn for that. Yet for decades, 00:00:41.140 --> 00:00:43.799 he was considered by Israel, by most Western 00:00:43.799 --> 00:00:46.579 intelligence agencies as an arch terrorist. The 00:00:46.579 --> 00:00:48.340 number one target on the list for a long, long 00:00:48.340 --> 00:00:50.539 time. We are talking, of course, about Yasser 00:00:50.539 --> 00:00:52.340 Arafat. And I feel like even if you don't know 00:00:52.340 --> 00:00:54.259 all the ins and outs of Middle Eastern politics, 00:00:54.579 --> 00:00:57.000 you know the image. Oh, absolutely. If I close 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:59.840 my eyes and just picture the news from the 70s 00:00:59.840 --> 00:01:04.260 or 80s, I see him. The military fatigues, the 00:01:04.260 --> 00:01:07.459 stubbly beard, and that black and white checkered 00:01:07.459 --> 00:01:11.599 headscarf. And even that was a calculated piece 00:01:11.599 --> 00:01:13.920 of branding. You know, he didn't just throw that 00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:16.040 on. What do you mean? He folded it specifically 00:01:16.040 --> 00:01:19.019 on his head so that the tail of the scarf would 00:01:19.019 --> 00:01:22.019 drape over his right shoulder in the rough shape 00:01:22.019 --> 00:01:26.040 of historic Palestine. Whee! Absolutely. Every 00:01:26.040 --> 00:01:27.939 single time. He was a master of iconography, 00:01:27.980 --> 00:01:30.340 of branding, before we really use that word in 00:01:30.340 --> 00:01:32.680 geopolitics. He understood the power of the visual. 00:01:32.859 --> 00:01:35.680 I mean, he wore a holster into the United Nations 00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:38.040 General Assembly. A holster. It created this 00:01:38.040 --> 00:01:40.920 whole aesthetic of the eternal revolutionary. 00:01:41.599 --> 00:01:44.019 So here is our mission for this deep dive. We've 00:01:44.019 --> 00:01:46.620 got a comprehensive biographical dossier in front 00:01:46.620 --> 00:01:48.879 of us. It's built from, you know, a huge range 00:01:48.879 --> 00:01:51.120 of sources. And we want to try and strip away 00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:53.799 the caricature, the guy on the T -shirt or, you 00:01:53.799 --> 00:01:55.859 know, the villain in the cartoons and figure 00:01:55.859 --> 00:01:58.780 out who was the actual man. How did he survive? 00:01:59.040 --> 00:02:01.500 I mean, really, how did he survive assassination 00:02:01.500 --> 00:02:04.120 attempts that would have killed a fictional action 00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:06.790 hero? And how did he take a scattered, desperate 00:02:06.790 --> 00:02:09.770 group of refugees and turn them into a national 00:02:09.770 --> 00:02:12.250 movement with a seat at the global table? To 00:02:12.250 --> 00:02:14.770 do that, we have to look strictly at the factual 00:02:14.770 --> 00:02:17.569 records. We have to try to move past the mythology, 00:02:17.830 --> 00:02:20.169 which is, I mean, it's thick on both sides, and 00:02:20.169 --> 00:02:21.969 look at the engineer, the strategist and the 00:02:21.969 --> 00:02:24.270 survivor. And we have a lot of ground to cover. 00:02:24.330 --> 00:02:28.770 We're going from his disputed birth to the caves 00:02:28.770 --> 00:02:31.469 of Jordan, the siege of Beirut, the diplomatic 00:02:31.469 --> 00:02:35.750 halls of Oslo, and finally, the very, very mysterious 00:02:35.750 --> 00:02:38.629 circumstances of his death. So let's start at 00:02:38.629 --> 00:02:40.629 the beginning. Or I guess the disputed beginning. 00:02:40.729 --> 00:02:42.770 Because I was really surprised to learn that 00:02:42.770 --> 00:02:45.430 even his birth certificate is an argument. That 00:02:45.430 --> 00:02:47.830 is the first contradiction. In a life that is 00:02:47.830 --> 00:02:50.250 just full of them. If you asked Arafat himself, 00:02:50.490 --> 00:02:52.710 and he gave many, many interviews on this, he 00:02:52.710 --> 00:02:55.370 would tell you, I was born in Jerusalem. Right 00:02:55.370 --> 00:02:56.969 in the heart of it. Right in the shadow of the 00:02:56.969 --> 00:03:00.090 Al -Aqsa Mosque. It's a powerful origin story. 00:03:00.289 --> 00:03:02.289 I mean, it ties him physically and spiritually 00:03:02.289 --> 00:03:05.030 to the holy site he claimed he was fighting for 00:03:05.030 --> 00:03:07.509 his entire life. It gives him instant legitimacy. 00:03:08.069 --> 00:03:11.580 Exactly. The paperwork tells a different story. 00:03:11.740 --> 00:03:14.219 Yeah. His official birth registration, which 00:03:14.219 --> 00:03:17.280 was dug up by biographers years later, it clearly 00:03:17.280 --> 00:03:21.060 puts him in Cairo, Egypt in August 1929. So his 00:03:21.060 --> 00:03:23.879 father was Palestinian? His father was a textile 00:03:23.879 --> 00:03:26.560 merchant from Gaza, but the family was living 00:03:26.560 --> 00:03:29.520 in Cairo at the time of his birth. So he was 00:03:29.520 --> 00:03:32.620 an Egyptian -Palestinian. Is that fair to say? 00:03:32.840 --> 00:03:35.560 Culturally, in many ways, yes. And this is a 00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:37.780 detail that you have to understand really shaped 00:03:37.780 --> 00:03:40.460 his psychology. He grew up in Cairo. He spoke 00:03:40.460 --> 00:03:43.460 Arabic with a distinct, noticeable Egyptian accent. 00:03:43.680 --> 00:03:46.500 Ah, and other Palestinians would pick up on that. 00:03:46.620 --> 00:03:48.960 Oh, they used it against him for his entire career. 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:51.379 His political rivals, when things got heated, 00:03:51.560 --> 00:03:54.300 they'd mock the way he spoke. They'd say, he's 00:03:54.300 --> 00:03:56.259 not really one of us. He's an Egyptian. That's 00:03:56.259 --> 00:03:57.939 got to leave a chip on your shoulder. You're 00:03:57.939 --> 00:03:59.520 fighting for a national identity that people 00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:01.740 are telling you you don't fully possess. Absolutely. 00:04:02.120 --> 00:04:03.900 And his childhood, from all accounts, wasn't 00:04:03.900 --> 00:04:05.960 easy to begin with. His mother died when he was 00:04:05.960 --> 00:04:08.689 just four years old. Oh. That's a trauma that 00:04:08.689 --> 00:04:12.069 stays with you. Yeah. His father, seemingly overwhelmed, 00:04:12.490 --> 00:04:15.569 shipped Arafat and his brother Fathi off to Jerusalem 00:04:15.569 --> 00:04:17.689 to live with an uncle for a few years. So he 00:04:17.689 --> 00:04:21.350 did live in Jerusalem. He did, but briefly. Yeah. 00:04:21.389 --> 00:04:23.689 That was his real, tangible, physical connection 00:04:23.689 --> 00:04:26.290 to the land. He eventually went back to Cairo, 00:04:26.350 --> 00:04:29.569 and his relationship with his father was, let's 00:04:29.569 --> 00:04:32.509 call it toxic. Distant. Very distant. Very strict. 00:04:33.089 --> 00:04:36.329 When his father eventually died, Arafat didn't 00:04:36.329 --> 00:04:39.300 even go to the funeral. Wow. OK, sans speaks 00:04:39.300 --> 00:04:42.019 volumes. But this friction at home, it might 00:04:42.019 --> 00:04:44.819 have pushed him outward toward politics. And 00:04:44.819 --> 00:04:46.300 looking through our notes, there is this one 00:04:46.300 --> 00:04:48.939 incredible anecdote from his teenage years in 00:04:48.939 --> 00:04:51.420 Cairo that I think just unlocks his whole mindset. 00:04:51.720 --> 00:04:54.319 The synagogue visits. Yes. This blew my mind. 00:04:54.379 --> 00:04:56.779 So we're talking about the 1940s. Arafat is a 00:04:56.779 --> 00:04:58.879 teenager living in Cairo and he starts sneaking 00:04:58.879 --> 00:05:01.420 out to attend services at local synagogues. It 00:05:01.420 --> 00:05:03.779 sounds made up, doesn't it? But it's documented. 00:05:04.019 --> 00:05:06.360 When his father found out, he reportedly beat 00:05:06.360 --> 00:05:08.600 him for it. But when his sister asked him why 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:11.480 on earth he was doing it, Arafat didn't say he 00:05:11.480 --> 00:05:13.680 was converting or anything like that. He said 00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:16.379 he wanted to study the Jewish mentality. He was 00:05:16.379 --> 00:05:18.660 a teenager doing opposition research. He was. 00:05:18.740 --> 00:05:21.920 He was reading works by Theodor Herzl, the father 00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:24.720 of modern Zionism. He wanted to understand his 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:28.000 enemy. That is wildly precocious. I mean, most 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:30.339 kids are sneaking out to smoke cigarettes or 00:05:30.339 --> 00:05:33.040 see a movie. He's sneaking out to do reconnaissance 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:35.620 on his future adversaries. It shows that even 00:05:35.620 --> 00:05:38.629 then, He was analytical. He treated the conflict 00:05:38.629 --> 00:05:41.310 not just as, you know, a religious fight or a 00:05:41.310 --> 00:05:44.170 street brawl, but as a puzzle to be solved. He 00:05:44.170 --> 00:05:46.370 wanted to know how the other side thought. And 00:05:46.370 --> 00:05:48.810 that analytical streak, it makes so much sense 00:05:48.810 --> 00:05:51.209 because, and this is another fact people often 00:05:51.209 --> 00:05:53.910 forget because of the military uniform, he wasn't 00:05:53.910 --> 00:05:56.670 a soldier by trade. Not at all. He was an engineer. 00:05:56.870 --> 00:05:58.990 A civil engineer. He graduated from the University 00:05:58.990 --> 00:06:02.050 of King Feud I. That's a very specific way of 00:06:02.050 --> 00:06:04.709 thinking. Engineers look at structural stress. 00:06:04.910 --> 00:06:07.250 They look at leverage, how to build things. And 00:06:07.250 --> 00:06:09.149 how to break things. And how to break things. 00:06:09.310 --> 00:06:11.990 The engineer in the keffiyeh. It doesn't have 00:06:11.990 --> 00:06:14.269 the same ring to it as the gorilla, but in many 00:06:14.269 --> 00:06:17.329 ways it's more accurate. So what does he do with 00:06:17.329 --> 00:06:20.410 this degree? Well, in the late 1950s, he moves 00:06:20.410 --> 00:06:22.990 to Kuwait. He gets a job working in construction. 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:26.839 And this period in Kuwait is arguably the most 00:06:26.839 --> 00:06:29.699 important time in his entire life. If you want 00:06:29.699 --> 00:06:31.819 to understand the PLO, you have to understand 00:06:31.819 --> 00:06:34.779 Arafat in Kuwait. Why Kuwait? Was it just for 00:06:34.779 --> 00:06:36.839 the job? It was for the money and it was for 00:06:36.839 --> 00:06:40.279 the freedom. Kuwait in the late 50s was a boomtown. 00:06:40.500 --> 00:06:43.019 Oil money was flowing everywhere. And it was 00:06:43.019 --> 00:06:46.360 full of educated, professional Palestinians who 00:06:46.360 --> 00:06:48.920 couldn't go home. A diaspora community. A very 00:06:48.920 --> 00:06:52.160 active one. And Arafat meets key people there. 00:06:52.980 --> 00:06:55.639 Khalil al -Wazir, who becomes known as Abu Jihad, 00:06:55.740 --> 00:06:58.740 and Salah Khalaf, who becomes Abu Yad. They're 00:06:58.740 --> 00:07:00.660 all there. They start a movement. They call it 00:07:00.660 --> 00:07:02.720 Fatah. I've always wondered about that name. 00:07:02.779 --> 00:07:04.660 I know Fatah is the political party now, but 00:07:04.660 --> 00:07:07.279 is it just a random word? No, it's a clever linguistic 00:07:07.279 --> 00:07:10.259 trick. The full name in Arabic is Harakah al 00:07:10.259 --> 00:07:12.920 -Tahrir al -Watani al -Filistini, the Palestinian 00:07:12.920 --> 00:07:15.199 National Liberation Movement. If you take the 00:07:15.199 --> 00:07:17.300 first letters of those words in reverse order, 00:07:17.439 --> 00:07:22.470 it spells F -T -H, Fatah. Wait, why reverse order? 00:07:22.629 --> 00:07:26.850 Because the forward acronym HHTF or HATAF means 00:07:26.850 --> 00:07:30.810 sudden death in Arabic. Ah, not great for branding. 00:07:30.990 --> 00:07:32.829 Terrible branding for a liberation movement. 00:07:33.069 --> 00:07:35.629 So they reversed it to FAPA, which has this powerful 00:07:35.629 --> 00:07:38.709 historical resonance. In an early Islamic context, 00:07:38.790 --> 00:07:42.160 it means conquest or opening. like opening a 00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:45.180 city to Islam. It's invocative. Very. But here 00:07:45.180 --> 00:07:47.100 is the real innovation of Fatah, and this is 00:07:47.100 --> 00:07:48.639 the key takeaway if you want to understand the 00:07:48.639 --> 00:07:50.699 politics of that era. Okay, hit me. What made 00:07:50.699 --> 00:07:52.740 them different from all the other groups? Independence. 00:07:53.600 --> 00:07:56.180 Before Arafat, most Palestinian groups were essentially 00:07:56.180 --> 00:07:58.660 puppets. They were funded by Egypt or by Syria 00:07:58.660 --> 00:08:01.300 or by Iraq. So they had to toe the line? They 00:08:01.300 --> 00:08:03.139 had to do what those governments wanted. They 00:08:03.139 --> 00:08:06.579 were pawns in a bigger Arab chess game. If Egypt 00:08:06.579 --> 00:08:08.699 wanted to annoy Israel, they'd tell the Palestinians 00:08:08.699 --> 00:08:11.680 to launch a raid. If Egypt wanted quiet, they'd 00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:13.980 tell him to sit down. And Arafat, the engineer, 00:08:14.120 --> 00:08:15.980 looked at the schematics and saw a fundamental 00:08:15.980 --> 00:08:19.459 design flaw. Exactly. He realized, if they pay 00:08:19.459 --> 00:08:22.579 us, they own us. So he decided to change the 00:08:22.579 --> 00:08:25.259 funding model entirely. He went to the wealthy 00:08:25.259 --> 00:08:27.439 Palestinians working in the Gulf oil fields, 00:08:27.540 --> 00:08:29.800 you know, the engineers, the doctors, the teachers 00:08:29.800 --> 00:08:32.460 making good money, and asked them to tithe a 00:08:32.460 --> 00:08:34.879 portion of their income directly to Fatah. He 00:08:34.879 --> 00:08:36.960 crowdfunded the revolution. He essentially did. 00:08:37.039 --> 00:08:39.539 He built a war chest that was completely independent 00:08:39.539 --> 00:08:43.820 of Nasser in Egypt or the Baathists in Syria. 00:08:44.120 --> 00:08:46.620 And that financial independence allowed Fatah 00:08:46.620 --> 00:08:48.960 to make its own decisions. It was a huge deal. 00:08:49.120 --> 00:08:51.480 It turned the Palestinian cause from a foreign 00:08:51.480 --> 00:08:54.960 policy tool of Arab states into a uniquely Palestinian 00:08:54.960 --> 00:08:57.200 national movement. That's the whole ballgame. 00:08:57.320 --> 00:08:59.659 He basically privatized the liberation movement 00:08:59.659 --> 00:09:01.799 to safeguard it. But a movement needs more than 00:09:01.799 --> 00:09:04.460 money. It needs a myth. It needs a defining battle. 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:07.519 You can't build a revolution just on bank transfers 00:09:07.519 --> 00:09:09.659 from Kuwait. You're absolutely right. And that 00:09:09.659 --> 00:09:12.799 brings us to 1968 and a dusty, forgotten town 00:09:12.799 --> 00:09:16.009 in Jordan called Karameh. This is listed in our 00:09:16.009 --> 00:09:18.370 timeline as the turning point. So set the scene 00:09:18.370 --> 00:09:20.029 for us. This is just after the Six -Day War, 00:09:20.149 --> 00:09:23.450 right? Right. And to understand Karameh, you 00:09:23.450 --> 00:09:27.070 have to understand the mood of 1967. The Six 00:09:27.070 --> 00:09:30.669 -Day War was an absolute, unmitigated catastrophe 00:09:30.669 --> 00:09:34.750 for the Arab world. A humiliation. A total humiliation. 00:09:35.370 --> 00:09:37.850 Israel defeated the combined armies of Egypt. 00:09:38.320 --> 00:09:41.519 Jordan and Syria in less than a week. The Arab 00:09:41.519 --> 00:09:43.620 populations were demoralized. The conventional 00:09:43.620 --> 00:09:46.000 armies had failed utterly. Into the guerrillas. 00:09:46.220 --> 00:09:49.440 Exactly. Arafat and Fatah had set up a base in 00:09:49.440 --> 00:09:52.399 Jordan, and they were launching these small but 00:09:52.399 --> 00:09:55.120 annoying cross -border raids into the Israeli 00:09:55.120 --> 00:09:57.940 -occupied West Bank. Israel decided they needed 00:09:57.940 --> 00:10:00.639 to stamp this out. So they planned a major raid. 00:10:00.740 --> 00:10:03.320 A huge raid on the Fata headquarters in the town 00:10:03.320 --> 00:10:06.279 of Karameh with tanks and helicopters to wipe 00:10:06.279 --> 00:10:08.179 them out completely. And typically in guerrilla 00:10:08.179 --> 00:10:10.580 warfare, rule number one is when a regular army 00:10:10.580 --> 00:10:13.320 advances with tanks, you melt away. You run. 00:10:13.399 --> 00:10:15.539 You live to fight another day. That was the standard 00:10:15.539 --> 00:10:18.259 operating procedure. In fact, the Jordanian army 00:10:18.259 --> 00:10:20.240 intelligence got wind of the attack and tipped 00:10:20.240 --> 00:10:22.559 off Arafat. They told him, they're coming. You 00:10:22.559 --> 00:10:24.500 need to leave. You can't fight tanks with AK 00:10:24.500 --> 00:10:26.980 -47s. But he made a different call. A fateful 00:10:26.980 --> 00:10:30.019 one. He ordered his men to stay and fight. Why? 00:10:30.620 --> 00:10:33.120 That sounds like a suicide mission. It was about 00:10:33.120 --> 00:10:36.000 the narrative. He told his commanders, we need 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:39.019 to break the image of the fleeing Arab. He wanted 00:10:39.019 --> 00:10:41.200 to show that Palestinians would stand their ground 00:10:41.200 --> 00:10:43.740 and die for their land even against impossible 00:10:43.740 --> 00:10:46.899 odds. So what happened in the actual battle? 00:10:47.159 --> 00:10:51.039 Did they win? Tactically, no. It was a defeat 00:10:51.039 --> 00:10:53.379 for the Palestinians. The camp was destroyed. 00:10:53.740 --> 00:10:55.860 Many of their fighters were killed or captured. 00:10:56.200 --> 00:11:00.139 Arafat himself barely survived. But this is the 00:11:00.139 --> 00:11:02.259 big but. The outcome was different. The Israeli 00:11:02.259 --> 00:11:04.860 army took unexpected casualties. They lost tanks. 00:11:05.019 --> 00:11:06.860 They lost other vehicles. They were surprised 00:11:06.860 --> 00:11:09.500 by the ferocity of the resistance. And significantly, 00:11:09.879 --> 00:11:12.440 the Jordanian army's artillery eventually joined 00:11:12.440 --> 00:11:14.500 in to support the Palestinians. So he lost the 00:11:14.500 --> 00:11:16.840 battle, but he won the war of public opinion. 00:11:17.570 --> 00:11:19.870 Massively. It was a psychological victory that 00:11:19.870 --> 00:11:22.210 completely eclipsed the tactical defeat. And 00:11:22.210 --> 00:11:24.289 the story that went out wasn't Fatah loses camp. 00:11:24.490 --> 00:11:27.169 No. The story was someone finally stood up to 00:11:27.169 --> 00:11:30.750 the Israeli army. Almost overnight, Arafat's 00:11:30.750 --> 00:11:33.570 face was on the cover of Time magazine. And that's 00:11:33.570 --> 00:11:36.169 when everything changes. Everything. Recruitment 00:11:36.169 --> 00:11:39.620 skyrocketed. Thousands of young Arab men flocked 00:11:39.620 --> 00:11:42.340 to Jordan to join Fatah. Karameh transformed 00:11:42.340 --> 00:11:45.840 Arafat from a nuisance leader into a national 00:11:45.840 --> 00:11:49.080 hero. He became the face of the cause. But this 00:11:49.080 --> 00:11:52.179 success in Jordan, it seems like it kind of went 00:11:52.179 --> 00:11:54.519 to his head, didn't it? It feels like Fatah got 00:11:54.519 --> 00:11:56.879 a little too comfortable there. Hubris is the 00:11:56.879 --> 00:12:00.200 perfect word. By 1970, just two years later, 00:12:00.460 --> 00:12:03.500 Fatah had created what was essentially a state 00:12:03.500 --> 00:12:06.429 within a state in Jordan. What does that mean 00:12:06.429 --> 00:12:08.769 in practice? They were controlling entire cities 00:12:08.769 --> 00:12:11.129 and refugee camps. They were setting up their 00:12:11.129 --> 00:12:13.950 own roadblocks, collecting their own taxes. They 00:12:13.950 --> 00:12:16.730 were driving around Amman heavily armed, openly 00:12:16.730 --> 00:12:19.730 humiliating the Jordanian police. They were acting 00:12:19.730 --> 00:12:21.549 like they owned the kingdom. I can't imagine 00:12:21.549 --> 00:12:24.029 a king taking that lightly for very long. Ki 00:12:24.029 --> 00:12:25.950 Hussein of Jordan was patient, but he had his 00:12:25.950 --> 00:12:28.470 limits. The breaking point was the Dawson's Field 00:12:28.470 --> 00:12:30.769 hijackings. Right. That was a huge international 00:12:30.769 --> 00:12:33.720 incident. The PFLP, which was a more radical 00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:37.100 faction under Arafat's PLO umbrella, hijacked 00:12:37.100 --> 00:12:40.080 several international jets and flew them to a 00:12:40.080 --> 00:12:42.620 remote airstrip in the Jordanian desert. And 00:12:42.620 --> 00:12:44.980 blew them up. And blew them up in front of the 00:12:44.980 --> 00:12:46.919 world's media. It was a massive embarrassment 00:12:46.919 --> 00:12:49.720 for the king. He decided enough was enough. And 00:12:49.720 --> 00:12:52.139 this is what became known as Black September. 00:12:52.440 --> 00:12:55.860 Yes. In September 1970, the king ordered the 00:12:55.860 --> 00:12:58.809 Jordanian army to crush the militias. It was 00:12:58.809 --> 00:13:02.149 a brutal, bloody civil war. Thousands of Palestinians 00:13:02.149 --> 00:13:05.149 died. The refugee camps were shelled. It was 00:13:05.149 --> 00:13:07.899 a massacre. And Arafat, the survivor, had to 00:13:07.899 --> 00:13:09.980 flee for his life again. He did. I read about 00:13:09.980 --> 00:13:12.220 the escape. There are all these rumors. Did he 00:13:12.220 --> 00:13:14.159 really dress up as a woman to get out? That's 00:13:14.159 --> 00:13:16.419 the persistent rumor. The stories say he slipped 00:13:16.419 --> 00:13:19.240 out to Syria, possibly disguised in women's clothing 00:13:19.240 --> 00:13:21.279 to get through the checkpoints, or that he was 00:13:21.279 --> 00:13:23.580 smuggled out in the trunk of a Kuwaiti diplomatic 00:13:23.580 --> 00:13:25.960 vehicle. We might never know the exact truth. 00:13:26.279 --> 00:13:29.259 No, but the fact remains. He escaped when many 00:13:29.259 --> 00:13:31.519 of his top lieutenants didn't. So he gets kicked 00:13:31.519 --> 00:13:33.379 out of Jordan and he moves the whole operation 00:13:33.379 --> 00:13:35.960 to Lebanon. And the cycle seems... to just repeat 00:13:35.960 --> 00:13:39.000 itself. It does. It's a pattern. Lebanon had 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:41.700 a very weak central government, which was perfect 00:13:41.700 --> 00:13:44.600 for the PLO's purposes. They established a new 00:13:44.600 --> 00:13:47.500 base, a sort of mini -state called Fataland in 00:13:47.500 --> 00:13:49.820 the south of the country. But Lebanon was a powder 00:13:49.820 --> 00:13:53.919 keg. A sectarian powder keg. And the PLO's massive 00:13:53.919 --> 00:13:57.259 armed presence helped light the fuse. Arafat 00:13:57.259 --> 00:13:58.759 tried to play the different factions against 00:13:58.759 --> 00:14:01.860 each other, but eventually the PLO became a major 00:14:01.860 --> 00:14:04.330 combatant in the Lebanese civil war. And this 00:14:04.330 --> 00:14:06.889 leads to another one of those massive confrontations 00:14:06.889 --> 00:14:10.529 with Israel, the 1982 invasion. Right. Israel 00:14:10.529 --> 00:14:12.889 invades Lebanon with the explicit goal of rooting 00:14:12.889 --> 00:14:16.169 out the PLO once and for all. They besiege West 00:14:16.169 --> 00:14:18.649 Beirut. For weeks, the city was under relentless 00:14:18.649 --> 00:14:20.970 bombardment. And Arafat, with his flair for the 00:14:20.970 --> 00:14:23.389 dramatic, declared Beirut the Hanoi and Stalingrad 00:14:23.389 --> 00:14:25.870 of the Israeli army he was digging in for a glorious 00:14:25.870 --> 00:14:28.149 last stand. But again, he survives. I feel like 00:14:28.149 --> 00:14:30.509 the theme of this deep dive is, and then Arafat 00:14:30.509 --> 00:14:33.029 escaped. It really is. Yeah. A U .S. brokered 00:14:33.029 --> 00:14:36.409 deal negotiated by Philip Habib allowed Arafat 00:14:36.409 --> 00:14:38.669 and his fighters safe passage out of Beirut. 00:14:38.850 --> 00:14:41.929 It was a surreal moment. He left on a ship escorted 00:14:41.929 --> 00:14:44.669 by French naval vessels. And he's on the deck 00:14:44.669 --> 00:14:47.250 flashing the victory sign. Like he had just won 00:14:47.250 --> 00:14:49.529 the World Cup, even though he was being exiled 00:14:49.529 --> 00:14:52.129 to Tunisia, thousands of miles away from the 00:14:52.129 --> 00:14:54.970 borders of Israel. Tunisia? That's a long way 00:14:54.970 --> 00:14:57.470 from the West Bank. It is, and that distance 00:14:57.470 --> 00:15:00.389 changed everything. He was a leader without a 00:15:00.389 --> 00:15:04.409 land, operating out of a hotel in Tunis. But 00:15:04.409 --> 00:15:06.429 before we get to the politics of that era, we 00:15:06.429 --> 00:15:08.289 have to talk about his personal survival skills. 00:15:08.970 --> 00:15:11.210 Because looking at the sheer volume of attempts 00:15:11.210 --> 00:15:13.490 on his life, the fact that he died of illness 00:15:13.490 --> 00:15:17.990 is, frankly, statistically improbable. OK, let's 00:15:17.990 --> 00:15:19.809 run through the greatest hits of his survival, 00:15:20.029 --> 00:15:22.629 because it sounds like a spy novel. It puts spy 00:15:22.629 --> 00:15:26.549 novels to shame. In Beirut, Ariel Sharon, who 00:15:26.549 --> 00:15:29.169 was the Israeli defense minister, created a special 00:15:29.169 --> 00:15:32.230 task force. The codename was Saltfish and later 00:15:32.230 --> 00:15:34.710 Goldfish. And their only job? To track and kill 00:15:34.710 --> 00:15:37.159 Yasser Arafat. That's it. They were bombing buildings 00:15:37.159 --> 00:15:39.179 he was supposed to be in, sometimes just minutes 00:15:39.179 --> 00:15:41.519 after he had left. So he became paranoid. Rightfully 00:15:41.519 --> 00:15:44.980 so. He claimed in an interview in 1988 that he 00:15:44.980 --> 00:15:47.139 never slept in the same bed two nights in a row. 00:15:47.440 --> 00:15:50.259 He would schedule meetings in one location and 00:15:50.259 --> 00:15:52.379 then show up in a completely different one. He 00:15:52.379 --> 00:15:54.659 kept his own security team guessing. And then 00:15:54.659 --> 00:15:57.100 there was the raid in Tunisia. Right. Even 1 00:15:57.100 --> 00:16:00.100 ,200 miles away, he wasn't safe. Operation Wooden 00:16:00.100 --> 00:16:03.919 Leg, 1985. Israeli F -15s flew all the way across 00:16:03.919 --> 00:16:06.000 the Mediterranean to bomb his headquarters in 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:08.480 Tunis. They flattened the building. 73 people 00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:12.000 died. Arafat survived. Do you know why? Why? 00:16:12.500 --> 00:16:14.820 He decided to go for a jog that morning. You 00:16:14.820 --> 00:16:17.840 are kidding me. A jog? A jog. If you'd been at 00:16:17.840 --> 00:16:20.019 his desk working, you would have been vaporized. 00:16:20.490 --> 00:16:23.049 Then jump forward to 1992. This one wasn't even 00:16:23.049 --> 00:16:26.009 an assassination attempt, just pure chance. He's 00:16:26.009 --> 00:16:28.149 on a private plane flying over the Libyan desert. 00:16:28.330 --> 00:16:30.610 And a sandstorm hits. A massive sandstorm. The 00:16:30.610 --> 00:16:32.769 plane has to crash land. And a plane crash in 00:16:32.769 --> 00:16:34.450 the desert. That's usually the end of the story. 00:16:34.690 --> 00:16:36.809 The pilots were killed. Several of his aides 00:16:36.809 --> 00:16:39.190 were killed. Arafat. He walked away with some 00:16:39.190 --> 00:16:42.330 bruises and a concussion. He was famously dubbed 00:16:42.330 --> 00:16:45.570 the cat with nine lives. It's incredible. But 00:16:45.570 --> 00:16:47.950 while he was dodging death, his political strategy 00:16:47.950 --> 00:16:51.009 was starting to shift. We see this move from 00:16:51.009 --> 00:16:53.929 the gun to the olive branch. That phrase comes 00:16:53.929 --> 00:16:57.090 directly from his famous 1974 speech at the U 00:16:57.090 --> 00:17:00.090 .N. He was the first representative of a non 00:17:00.090 --> 00:17:02.649 -state entity to ever address the General Assembly. 00:17:02.929 --> 00:17:05.390 And he said that line. He said, I have come bearing 00:17:05.390 --> 00:17:08.309 an olive branch in one hand and a freedom fighter's 00:17:08.309 --> 00:17:10.670 rifle in the other. Do not let the green branch 00:17:10.670 --> 00:17:12.730 fall from my hand. And he was wearing an empty 00:17:12.730 --> 00:17:15.130 holster during that. speech? The symbolism was 00:17:15.130 --> 00:17:17.869 everything. I'm ready to talk, but I am still 00:17:17.869 --> 00:17:20.730 a soldier. But the real substantive shift happened 00:17:20.730 --> 00:17:23.789 in 1988. From exile in Tunis, he's watching the 00:17:23.789 --> 00:17:26.109 first Intifada erupt back home. Without him? 00:17:26.250 --> 00:17:28.630 Without him. He's becoming irrelevant. He needed 00:17:28.630 --> 00:17:31.230 to get back in the game. So he formally renounced 00:17:31.230 --> 00:17:35.029 terrorism and accepted UN Resolution 242. Which 00:17:35.029 --> 00:17:37.269 effectively meant recognizing Israel's right 00:17:37.269 --> 00:17:40.049 to exist. Implicitly, yes. And for the Palestinian 00:17:40.049 --> 00:17:42.630 movement, this was a massive seismic concession. 00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:44.920 It was what allowed the U .S. to finally open 00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:48.400 a dialogue with the PLO. But then Arafat, true 00:17:48.400 --> 00:17:50.759 to his complex and often contradictory nature, 00:17:51.039 --> 00:17:53.839 made a colossal blunder that almost ruined everything. 00:17:54.319 --> 00:17:59.180 The Gulf War. 1990. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. 00:17:59.319 --> 00:18:01.980 And the entire world, including most of the Arab 00:18:01.980 --> 00:18:05.460 states, condemns Saddam. Arafat. He supports 00:18:05.460 --> 00:18:07.720 him. Why? I mean, we just talked about how Kuwait 00:18:07.720 --> 00:18:10.950 gave him his start. Kuwait hosted... thousands 00:18:10.950 --> 00:18:13.450 of Palestinians who were funding the PLO for 00:18:13.450 --> 00:18:16.269 decades. It was a disastrous miscalculation. 00:18:16.289 --> 00:18:18.789 He was betting on the Arab street, which, you 00:18:18.789 --> 00:18:21.529 know, loved Saddam's fiery anti -Western rhetoric. 00:18:21.630 --> 00:18:24.009 He thought Saddam might actually win or at least 00:18:24.009 --> 00:18:26.049 reshape the entire region. And the Gulf states 00:18:26.049 --> 00:18:29.089 were furious. Livid. They expelled hundreds of 00:18:29.089 --> 00:18:30.829 thousands of Palestinian workers. They cut off 00:18:30.829 --> 00:18:33.170 all the funding. The PLO went nearly bankrupt 00:18:33.170 --> 00:18:35.769 overnight. Arafat was isolated diplomatically 00:18:35.769 --> 00:18:38.769 and totally broke financially. And paradoxically, 00:18:38.769 --> 00:18:40.970 being broke and isolated might have been the 00:18:40.970 --> 00:18:43.309 very thing that pushed him toward peace. Exactly. 00:18:43.349 --> 00:18:45.410 He needed a lifeline. He desperately needed a 00:18:45.410 --> 00:18:47.950 way back onto the world stage. And that desperation 00:18:47.950 --> 00:18:50.630 led to the secret back channels in Oslo, Norway. 00:18:50.890 --> 00:18:54.009 The Oslo Accords, 1993. The famous handshake 00:18:54.009 --> 00:18:56.750 on the White House lawn. You have Bill Clinton 00:18:56.750 --> 00:18:58.490 spreading his arms like a parent, separating 00:18:58.490 --> 00:19:01.390 two fighting kids. You have Yitzhak Rabin looking 00:19:01.390 --> 00:19:04.450 visibly uncomfortable. And Arafat beaming. Beaming. 00:19:04.650 --> 00:19:08.049 The deal was mutual recognition. The PLO recognizes 00:19:08.049 --> 00:19:11.390 Israel's right to exist. Israel recognizes the 00:19:11.390 --> 00:19:14.089 PLO as the sole legitimate representative of 00:19:14.089 --> 00:19:16.789 the Palestinian people. And it set up a framework 00:19:16.789 --> 00:19:19.789 for gradual self -rule. And they all got the 00:19:19.789 --> 00:19:23.329 Nobel Peace Prize for it. Arafat, Rabin, and 00:19:23.329 --> 00:19:25.829 Shimon Peres. Which was incredibly controversial 00:19:25.829 --> 00:19:29.069 at the time. But in 1994, Arafat did something 00:19:29.069 --> 00:19:32.369 he hadn't done in decades. He went home. He crossed 00:19:32.369 --> 00:19:34.569 the border into Gaza to lead the newly formed 00:19:34.569 --> 00:19:36.609 Palestinian National Authority. That must have 00:19:36.609 --> 00:19:38.769 been a euphoric moment for his supporters. It 00:19:38.769 --> 00:19:40.880 was hysteria. People were weeping in the streets, 00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:43.240 climbing on his car. But this is where the story 00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:45.220 shifts dramatically. It goes from the revolutionary 00:19:45.220 --> 00:19:48.140 to the authority. And Arafat found out that governing 00:19:48.140 --> 00:19:50.559 is very, very different from leading a guerrilla 00:19:50.559 --> 00:19:53.160 movement from afar. Let's unpack his governance 00:19:53.160 --> 00:19:56.319 style. Because he didn't exactly set up a transparent 00:19:56.319 --> 00:19:59.140 Scandinavian -style democracy like Western donors 00:19:59.140 --> 00:20:01.940 might have hoped for. No, not at all. He set 00:20:01.940 --> 00:20:05.039 up a patronage system. He centralized all power. 00:20:05.529 --> 00:20:08.529 directly in his own hands. He appointed the mayors. 00:20:08.630 --> 00:20:10.730 He controlled all the different security services. 00:20:10.910 --> 00:20:13.690 And most importantly, he controlled the money. 00:20:13.829 --> 00:20:16.730 The money is a huge topic here. There were allegations 00:20:16.730 --> 00:20:19.430 of massive widespread corruption. It's complicated. 00:20:19.670 --> 00:20:21.690 The scale of the money involved was immense. 00:20:22.109 --> 00:20:26.089 An IMF audit in 2003 found that Arafat had personally 00:20:26.089 --> 00:20:29.670 diverted about $900 million in public funds into 00:20:29.670 --> 00:20:32.109 accounts that he alone controlled. So he stole 00:20:32.109 --> 00:20:34.440 it. Well, the IMF was careful to note that the 00:20:34.440 --> 00:20:36.279 money wasn't necessarily stolen for personal 00:20:36.279 --> 00:20:38.400 luxury. A lot of it was used for Palestinian 00:20:38.400 --> 00:20:40.680 investments, but it was completely off the books. 00:20:40.720 --> 00:20:42.779 No oversight. But there was also a secret portfolio, 00:20:42.880 --> 00:20:45.240 wasn't there? Yes. U .S. investigators later 00:20:45.240 --> 00:20:47.380 found a secret portfolio worth close to a billion 00:20:47.380 --> 00:20:49.500 dollars. We're talking about investments in a 00:20:49.500 --> 00:20:51.819 Coca -Cola plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell 00:20:51.819 --> 00:20:54.019 phone company, venture capital funds in the U 00:20:54.019 --> 00:20:56.680 .S. So what was the purpose of hoarding all this 00:20:56.680 --> 00:21:00.160 cash? Was he just greedy? It wasn't about greed 00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:02.769 in the sense of... buying yachts and sports cars. 00:21:02.950 --> 00:21:06.210 It was about loyalty. Dennis Ross, the U .S. 00:21:06.269 --> 00:21:09.329 negotiator, called it walking around money. It's 00:21:09.329 --> 00:21:12.289 a system political scientists call neopatrimonialism. 00:21:12.349 --> 00:21:14.990 How did it work? If a Klan leader in Nablus was 00:21:14.990 --> 00:21:17.789 causing trouble, Arafat would pay him off. If 00:21:17.789 --> 00:21:20.150 a security chief needed new equipment or cars 00:21:20.150 --> 00:21:23.930 for his men, Arafat wrote a personal check. He 00:21:23.930 --> 00:21:27.029 built a system where everyone, every single faction, 00:21:27.230 --> 00:21:29.609 depended on him personally for their money and 00:21:29.609 --> 00:21:32.109 power. So the corruption was actually the glue 00:21:32.109 --> 00:21:34.990 holding his authority to yes. Slightly. But it 00:21:34.990 --> 00:21:37.289 completely rotted the institutions from the inside 00:21:37.289 --> 00:21:40.069 out. And meanwhile, his wife, Sukha, was living 00:21:40.069 --> 00:21:42.369 a very different life. That was a source of major 00:21:42.369 --> 00:21:45.710 resentment among Palestinians. Huge. Yeah. Arafat 00:21:45.710 --> 00:21:48.809 married Sukha Tawil in 1990. She was much younger. 00:21:48.869 --> 00:21:51.029 She was a Christian who converted to Islam. And 00:21:51.029 --> 00:21:52.970 she lived in Paris on a very generous monthly 00:21:52.970 --> 00:21:55.049 stipend from the Palestinian Authority. While 00:21:55.049 --> 00:21:57.950 people in Gaza were struggling. Exactly. Arafat 00:21:57.950 --> 00:21:59.910 himself lived pretty modestly. He always wore 00:21:59.910 --> 00:22:03.309 the same uniforms, ate simple food. But the perception 00:22:03.309 --> 00:22:05.289 of corruption around his inner circle and his 00:22:05.289 --> 00:22:08.049 family was incredibly damaging. So we have this 00:22:08.049 --> 00:22:09.869 corrupt or at least non -transparent authority. 00:22:10.329 --> 00:22:13.170 But the peace process was still technically alive. 00:22:14.460 --> 00:22:16.839 Until Camp David 2000. This is the tragic climax 00:22:16.839 --> 00:22:19.819 of the entire diplomacy era. Bill Clinton brings 00:22:19.819 --> 00:22:22.619 Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak 00:22:22.619 --> 00:22:26.019 to Camp David for one last big push for a final 00:22:26.019 --> 00:22:28.119 agreement. And Barak puts a significant offer 00:22:28.119 --> 00:22:31.079 on the table. A very significant offer. A Palestinian 00:22:31.079 --> 00:22:33.440 state and about 90 % of the West Bank and all 00:22:33.440 --> 00:22:36.500 is Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem, is 00:22:36.500 --> 00:22:38.799 more than had ever been offered before. And Arafat 00:22:38.799 --> 00:22:41.259 said no. He said no. And critically, he didn't 00:22:41.259 --> 00:22:43.400 make a counteroffer. He just walked away. Why? 00:22:43.519 --> 00:22:46.940 What was the final deal breaker? Jerusalem. Specifically, 00:22:47.059 --> 00:22:49.259 sovereignty over the Temple Mount, or as it's 00:22:49.259 --> 00:22:51.619 known to Muslims, the Haram al -Sharif, where 00:22:51.619 --> 00:22:53.579 the Al -Aqsa Mosque is. What was the offer for 00:22:53.579 --> 00:22:55.740 that? Barak wanted to keep Israeli sovereignty 00:22:55.740 --> 00:22:59.160 over the site, but offered the Palestinians custodianship. 00:23:00.039 --> 00:23:03.099 Arafat famously told Bill Clinton, the Arab leader 00:23:03.099 --> 00:23:05.859 who would surrender Jerusalem is not born yet. 00:23:05.980 --> 00:23:08.460 He was afraid of being seen as a traitor. He 00:23:08.460 --> 00:23:10.500 was convinced that if he signed away sovereignty 00:23:10.500 --> 00:23:12.880 over the holy sites, he would be assassinated 00:23:12.880 --> 00:23:15.900 by his own people the next day. He felt the weight 00:23:15.900 --> 00:23:18.259 of the entire Islamic world on his shoulders, 00:23:18.460 --> 00:23:21.500 not just the Palestinians. So the summit collapses. 00:23:21.579 --> 00:23:24.960 And very shortly after, the second intifada begins. 00:23:25.319 --> 00:23:27.799 And this was a much more violent uprising than 00:23:27.799 --> 00:23:30.720 the first one. Much more. Suicide bombings in 00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:33.660 Israeli cities, a massive militarized response 00:23:33.660 --> 00:23:35.940 from Israel. It was a full -blown conflict. And 00:23:35.940 --> 00:23:38.359 the big question has always been... Did Arafat 00:23:38.359 --> 00:23:41.140 plan it or did he just get swept up in it? It's 00:23:41.140 --> 00:23:43.259 fiercely debated. Some analysts say he simply 00:23:43.259 --> 00:23:45.700 rode the wave, that the anger was spontaneous 00:23:45.700 --> 00:23:48.339 after the peace talks failed, and he just tried 00:23:48.339 --> 00:23:50.460 to stay in front of it to remain relevant. But 00:23:50.460 --> 00:23:53.579 others say he orchestrated it. Others, including 00:23:53.579 --> 00:23:56.539 some Hamas leaders like Mahmoud al -Zahar, later 00:23:56.539 --> 00:23:58.460 claimed that Arafat actually gave them the green 00:23:58.460 --> 00:24:01.099 light. And there were documents seized by Israel 00:24:01.099 --> 00:24:04.220 from his compound that seemed to show him authorizing 00:24:04.220 --> 00:24:07.059 payments to militant groups. This marked the 00:24:07.059 --> 00:24:09.599 absolute end of his relationship with the U .S. 00:24:09.619 --> 00:24:12.579 and Israel. Completely. George W. Bush declared 00:24:12.579 --> 00:24:15.920 him a failed leader. Ariel Sharon, who is now 00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:18.500 the prime minister of Israel, called him irrelevant. 00:24:19.140 --> 00:24:21.700 And then Sharon did what he'd been trying to 00:24:21.700 --> 00:24:24.500 do for decades. He cornered him. The siege of 00:24:24.500 --> 00:24:28.059 the Mukata. His compound in Ramallah. For over 00:24:28.059 --> 00:24:31.779 two years, from 2002 onwards, Arafat was confined 00:24:31.779 --> 00:24:34.640 to just a few rooms. Israeli tanks surrounded 00:24:34.640 --> 00:24:37.039 the building. Bulldozers literally tore down 00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:39.059 the walls around him, bit by bit. He was a prisoner. 00:24:39.240 --> 00:24:41.519 He spent his final years in ruins, surrounded 00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:43.359 by the dust of the peace process he had helped 00:24:43.359 --> 00:24:45.960 start. He was ostensibly the president of Palestine, 00:24:46.220 --> 00:24:47.819 but he was prisoner in his own headquarters. 00:24:48.279 --> 00:24:50.599 Which brings us to the final, and maybe the biggest, 00:24:50.799 --> 00:24:53.799 mystery. His death. It all happens very fast. 00:24:53.980 --> 00:24:57.789 It's October 2004. Arafat is in the besieged 00:24:57.789 --> 00:25:00.309 compound, and he suddenly falls ill during a 00:25:00.309 --> 00:25:03.450 meeting. He's vomiting. He can't stand up. At 00:25:03.450 --> 00:25:05.329 first, his personal doctor said it was just a 00:25:05.329 --> 00:25:08.089 bad case of the flu. But it got worse. Much worse. 00:25:08.349 --> 00:25:11.490 His platelet count dropped dramatically. Eventually, 00:25:11.609 --> 00:25:13.490 Israel agreed to let him be flown to France, 00:25:13.630 --> 00:25:15.970 to the Percy Military Hospital outside Paris. 00:25:16.430 --> 00:25:19.430 He lapsed into a coma and died on November 11, 00:25:19.630 --> 00:25:23.309 2004. He was 75. And the official cause of death 00:25:23.309 --> 00:25:26.299 was? A massive hemorrhagic stroke. caused by 00:25:26.299 --> 00:25:28.599 a blood condition called disseminated intravascular 00:25:28.599 --> 00:25:32.440 coagulation, or DIC. But, and here's the mystery, 00:25:32.779 --> 00:25:34.740 the doctors couldn't find the underlying cause 00:25:34.740 --> 00:25:36.180 of the blood condition. They couldn't figure 00:25:36.180 --> 00:25:38.200 out what triggered it. Exactly. They ruled out 00:25:38.200 --> 00:25:40.599 cancer. They ruled out AIDS. Despite all the 00:25:40.599 --> 00:25:42.680 rumors circulating at the time, there was no 00:25:42.680 --> 00:25:44.619 clear explanation. And immediately the theories 00:25:44.619 --> 00:25:47.200 started flying. The Israelis poisoned him. That 00:25:47.200 --> 00:25:48.980 was the belief on the Palestinian street from 00:25:48.980 --> 00:25:51.359 day one. But for years, it was just a theory. 00:25:51.460 --> 00:25:54.990 There was no proof. Until 2012. The Al Jazeera 00:25:54.990 --> 00:25:58.109 investigation? Right. The news network Al Jazeera 00:25:58.109 --> 00:26:00.950 worked with a top Swiss forensic institute to 00:26:00.950 --> 00:26:03.960 test... Arafat's personal belongings, his toothbrush, 00:26:04.279 --> 00:26:07.140 his hat, his coffee, which had been preserved 00:26:07.140 --> 00:26:09.759 by his widow, Suha. And they found something. 00:26:09.839 --> 00:26:12.859 They found polonium -210. Polonium? That's a 00:26:12.859 --> 00:26:15.900 highly radioactive isotope. That's the same stuff 00:26:15.900 --> 00:26:18.819 that was used to kill Russian spy Alexander Levinenko 00:26:18.819 --> 00:26:21.420 in London. Exactly. It's an incredibly sophisticated 00:26:21.420 --> 00:26:23.599 poison. You don't buy it at the corner store. 00:26:23.859 --> 00:26:26.259 Its presence implies a state actor was involved. 00:26:26.539 --> 00:26:29.680 The Swiss... found unusually high levels on his 00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:32.539 clothes. So this led to his body being exhumed. 00:26:32.539 --> 00:26:35.180 It did. It was a surreal scene. Arafat's body 00:26:35.180 --> 00:26:37.339 was dug up from his mausoleum in Ramallah for 00:26:37.339 --> 00:26:40.160 testing. Three separate international teams took 00:26:40.160 --> 00:26:43.119 samples. A Swiss team, a French team, and a Russian 00:26:43.119 --> 00:26:45.559 team. And did they all agree? Of course not. 00:26:45.660 --> 00:26:47.519 That would be far too simple for the end of Yasser 00:26:47.519 --> 00:26:49.960 Arafat's story. So what were the findings? The 00:26:49.960 --> 00:26:52.160 Swiss team said the levels of polonium they found 00:26:52.160 --> 00:26:55.200 in his bones were 18 to 36 times higher than 00:26:55.200 --> 00:26:57.859 the average and that the results reasonably supported 00:26:57.859 --> 00:27:00.660 the poisoning theory. One prominent forensic 00:27:00.660 --> 00:27:03.220 scientist called the presence of that much polonium 00:27:03.220 --> 00:27:06.099 a smoking gun. But the other teams disagreed. 00:27:06.359 --> 00:27:08.380 The French and Russian teams both claimed that 00:27:08.380 --> 00:27:10.480 the polonium was likely from environmental contamination 00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:13.000 after his death and concluded that he died of 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:15.839 natural causes. The French closed their inquiry 00:27:15.839 --> 00:27:18.839 in 2015. So even in death, there's no consensus. 00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:21.559 No consensus at all. Just conflicting narratives 00:27:21.559 --> 00:27:25.099 inextricably linked to the conflict itself. For 00:27:25.099 --> 00:27:27.420 many Palestinians, the Swiss report is the final 00:27:27.420 --> 00:27:30.140 word. They believe he was assassinated. So let's 00:27:30.140 --> 00:27:32.119 try to sum this all up. We've looked at the engineer, 00:27:32.319 --> 00:27:34.119 the guerrilla, the statesman, and the prisoner. 00:27:34.420 --> 00:27:36.779 At the end of the day, what is the legacy of 00:27:36.779 --> 00:27:39.559 Yasser Arafat? It depends entirely on where you 00:27:39.559 --> 00:27:43.240 stand. To many, many Israelis, he was the ultimate 00:27:43.240 --> 00:27:46.059 obstacle to peace. He was a man who had the chance 00:27:46.059 --> 00:27:49.039 to build a state at Camp David in 2000, but chose 00:27:49.039 --> 00:27:52.039 violence instead. Ariel Sharon called him a Jew 00:27:52.039 --> 00:27:55.119 murderer. They see him as the man who legitimized 00:27:55.119 --> 00:27:57.299 terrorism as a political tool on the world stage. 00:27:57.579 --> 00:28:00.359 And to Palestinians. He is the father. He's the 00:28:00.359 --> 00:28:02.539 symbol of their struggle. You have to remember, 00:28:02.680 --> 00:28:05.599 before Arafat, the Palestinians were often seen 00:28:05.599 --> 00:28:08.140 by the world simply as refugees, a humanitarian 00:28:08.140 --> 00:28:10.359 problem to be solved with tents and food aid. 00:28:10.579 --> 00:28:12.920 He gave them a political identity? A national 00:28:12.920 --> 00:28:15.660 identity. He forced the world to recognize them 00:28:15.660 --> 00:28:18.160 as a people with a political cause. He put Palestine 00:28:18.160 --> 00:28:20.690 on the map. Even his fiercest critics within 00:28:20.690 --> 00:28:22.869 Palestine, and there were many who hated his 00:28:22.869 --> 00:28:25.109 corruption and his authoritarianism, even they 00:28:25.109 --> 00:28:26.690 would have to admit that he kept the cause alive 00:28:26.690 --> 00:28:29.809 against absolutely impossible odds. He was, above 00:28:29.809 --> 00:28:32.930 all else, a survivor. He outlasted Nasser. He 00:28:32.930 --> 00:28:35.690 outlasted King Hussein. He outlasted Sadat. He 00:28:35.690 --> 00:28:37.950 outlasted the Soviet Union. But in the end, he 00:28:37.950 --> 00:28:40.089 couldn't outlast the failure of the peace process. 00:28:40.470 --> 00:28:43.470 It's a heavy story. But here's a thought to leave 00:28:43.470 --> 00:28:45.230 you with, something to chew on as we wrap up. 00:28:45.349 --> 00:28:47.990 We talked about Cam David in 2000. It's one of 00:28:47.990 --> 00:28:50.789 the biggest what -ifs in modern history. If Arafat 00:28:50.789 --> 00:28:53.750 had said yes. Exactly. Just think about it. If 00:28:53.750 --> 00:28:56.970 he had accepted that deal, 90 % of the West Bank, 00:28:57.089 --> 00:29:00.369 a capital in East Jerusalem, what would the Middle 00:29:00.369 --> 00:29:03.190 East look like today? Would there be a thriving, 00:29:03.329 --> 00:29:06.950 peaceful Palestinian state? Would Hamas have 00:29:06.950 --> 00:29:09.440 ever taken power in Gaza? Or would he have been 00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:11.500 assassinated by his own people the moment he 00:29:11.500 --> 00:29:14.160 signed it, just like Anwar Adat was in Egypt 00:29:14.160 --> 00:29:16.779 for making peace? It is the ultimate counterfactual. 00:29:16.839 --> 00:29:18.819 And the fact that we are still asking that question 00:29:18.819 --> 00:29:20.900 all these years later shows just how much one 00:29:20.900 --> 00:29:23.720 man's decision or indecision can shape the lives 00:29:23.720 --> 00:29:25.640 of millions. Thanks for diving deep with us. 00:29:25.700 --> 00:29:26.579 We'll catch you on the next one.