32. Mohammed Arafat

Mohammed Arafat was born on 24 August 1929 in Cairo, his father a 1) ___ who was a Palestinian with some Egyptian ancestry, his mother from an old Palestinian family in Jerusalem. She died when he was five years old, and he was sent to live with his uncle in Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, then under British rule, which the Palestinians were 2) _____. He had revealed little about his childhood, but one of his earliest memories was of British soldiers breaking into his uncle’s house after midnight, beating members of the family and destroying 3) _____.

After four years in Jerusalem, his father brought him back to Cairo where an older sister took care of him. Arafat never mentioned his father who was not close to his children. Arafat did not attend his father’s 4) ___ in 1952.

It was in 1964 that the Palestine Liberation Organization(PLO) was founded. Arafat developed the PLO intoa state within the state of Jordan with its own 5) ____ forces. King Hussein of Jordan, disturbed by its guerrilla attacks (游击战) on Israel and other violent methods, finally drove the PLO from his country. Arafat 6) ____ in Lebanon, but this time was driven out by an Israeli military invasion. He kept the organization alive, however, by moving its headquarters to Tunis. He was a 7) ____ himself, escaping death in an airplane crash.

His life was one of constant travel, moving from country to country to 8) ___ the Palestinian cause, always keeping his movements secret, as he did any details about his private life. Even his marriage to Suha Tawil, a Palestinian half his age, 9) ___. Their daughter, Zahwa,named after Arafat’s mother, has been born.

Now he passed away in a French hospital at the age of 75. He didn’t 10) ____ of founding a state of his own people in his life, but he will always be remembered as a freedom fighter by his people and the world.