In his dying, as in his life, Yasser Arafat seemed both dogged and indecisive. To the Palestinians, the people he led for so long, Mr Arafat's flaws of character and leadership had been plain for years, yet were irrelevant. What mattered was that he personified their fight for freedom, kept alive their hopes and defied their enemies. His career as "Mr Palestine" began in 1953 when, as a student in Egypt, he wrote "Don't Forget Palestine" in blood and presented the petition to General Neguib, Egypt's military leader. Five years later in Kuwait, disenchanted with the Arab world's inability to do anything about Israel's 1948 conquests, he and close comrades formed the Fatah movement, a word that itself meant "conquest". From that moment he was, in effect, the leader of Palestinian resistance, though it was not until 1969, after the Arabs' 1967 war with Israel, that he formally became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
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