Today, Saturday, November 11, marks the 19th anniversary of the martyrdom of the iconic president and leader Yasser Arafat, “Abu Ammar.”

“Abu Ammar” was martyred under difficult internal and external circumstances, from which our people and their liberation cause are still suffering, as a result of the occupation, aggression, and the ongoing Israeli siege... martyrs, wounded, and thousands of fighters languishing in detention centers, the spread of colonialism, the demolition of homes, and the dismemberment of the homeland.

The date of November 11 of every year will remain a painful memory that remembers the passing of a leader who fought a liberation struggle for our national cause for decades, and faced countless military and political battles for it, until it ended with his martyrdom in 2004, after an Israeli siege and aggression. It lasted more than three years for its headquarters in the city of Ramallah.

The various stages of the national struggle since the beginning of the contemporary revolution have benefited from the great skill of the leader and martyr, Yasser Arafat, and his will and steadfastness in the face of all challenges, as he turned many setbacks into victories that were recorded in history and that future generations will remember for a long time.

In this way, the martyr Yasser Arafat was physically absent from Palestine, but his legacy of struggle is still firmly established among our people and their leadership.

The late President “Abu Ammar” was born in Jerusalem on the fourth of August 1929, and his full name is “Muhammad Yasser” Abdul Raouf Daoud Suleiman Arafat Al-Qudwa Al-Husseini. He received his education in Cairo, and participated as a reserve officer in the Egyptian army in confronting the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956. .

The late leader studied at the Faculty of Engineering at Fouad I University in Cairo, and participated since his youth in the resurrection of the Palestinian national movement through his activity in the ranks of the Palestine Students Union, of which he later assumed the presidency.

He also participated with a group of Palestinian patriots in establishing the Palestinian National Liberation Movement “Fatah” in the 1950s, and became its official spokesman in 1968. He was elected Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization in February 1969, after the position had been previously held by Ahmed Al-Shugairi and Yahya Hamouda.

In 1974, Abu Ammar gave a speech on behalf of our Palestinian people, before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, and then said his famous sentence: “I came to you carrying the revolutionary’s rifle in one hand and an olive branch in the other, so do not drop the green branch from my hand.”

As Commander-in-Chief of the Joint Command of the Palestinian Revolutionary Forces and the Lebanese National Movement, Abu Ammar led the battle against the Israeli aggression against Lebanon during the summer of 1982. He also led the battles of steadfastness during the siege imposed by the invading Israeli forces around Beirut for 88 days, which ended with an international agreement requiring the departure of Palestinian fighters. From the city, and when journalists asked Yasser Arafat the moment he left by sea to Tunisia on a Greek ship about his next stop, he answered, “I am going to Palestine.”

Leader Yasser Arafat and the leadership and staff of the Liberation Organization were guests in Tunisia, and from there he began completing his diligent steps towards Palestine.

On October 1, 1985, Yasser Arafat miraculously survived an Israeli raid targeting the “Hammam Al-Shat” suburb in Tunisia, which led to the death and injury of dozens of Palestinians and Tunisians. By 1987, things began to relax and become more active on more than one level. After reconciliation was achieved between the opposing Palestinian political forces in a unified session of the Palestinian National Council, Arafat began to lead wars on several fronts. He supported the legendary steadfastness of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, directed the stone intifada that broke out in Palestine against the occupation in 1987, and fought political battles at the international level in order to enhance recognition of the Palestinian cause and the justice of their aspirations.

Following the declaration of independence in Algeria on the fifteenth of November 1988, the late, on the thirteenth and fourteenth of December of the same year in the United Nations General Assembly, launched the Palestinian Peace Initiative to achieve just peace in the Middle East. The General Assembly at that time moved to Geneva due to its refusal to The United States granted him a travel visa to New York, and this initiative was based on the decision of the American administration headed by Ronald Reagan on the 16th of the same month, to initiate a dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunisia as of March 30, 1989.

Yasser Arafat, at the head of the PLO cadre, returned to Palestine, in accordance with the Oslo Accords, which was signed in 1993 between the organization and the Israeli government in the White House, on the thirteenth of September.

On January 20, 1996, Yasser Arafat was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority in general elections, and the process of building the foundations of the Palestinian state began from that time.

After the failure of the Camp David negotiations in 2000 as a result of Israeli intransigence and Yasser Arafat’s keenness not to neglect Palestinian rights and violate their principles, the Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out on the twenty-eighth of September 2000, and occupation forces and tanks surrounded President Arafat in his headquarters, under the pretext of accusing him of leading the uprising, and invaded several cities in an operation. It called it the “defensive wall,” and kept the siege imposed on it in a narrow space that lacked the minimum conditions for human life.