Arafat: The Biography - Hardcover

'Highly readable, excellently crafted.' Sunday Telegraph

In 1968 Yasser Arafat swept onto the world stage as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, a machine gun in one hand and an olive branch in the other. Since 1968 he has become many things to many people - to ordinary Israelis a terrorist godfather whose desire for the complete annihilation of their state is only thinly veiled; to previous US administrations a Nobel Peace Prize-winner and the only Palestinian to do business with; to the Bush White House, a pariah once more. Based on hundreds of interviews with senior Israeli and Palestinian officials, including Arafat himself, this book examines his once triumphant transition from terrorist to statesman, and his subsequent marginalization following the tragic collapse of the Oslo Peace Accords. This book examines the charge that the bitter personal blood feud between Arafat and Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is itself a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East. It separates Arafat the man from Arafat the myth, and offers insight into the international and intelligence links, and the internal machinery, of the Palestinian regime.