Arafat turns 75, still stuck in shattered headquarters

JERUSALEM (AP) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat turned 75 Wednesday, but there were no birthday parties or parades.

Arafat spent the day as usual - hunkered down behind sandbags in the shell-pocked compound where he lives and works in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Aides said a few Palestinian officials brought Arafat flowers, but no festivities were planned.

Israel has confined Arafat to his Ramallah headquarters for more than two years, and the Israeli government refuses to deal with him, saying he has done nothing to halt Palestinian attacks and is an obstacle to Mideast peace.

Palestinians consider Arafat their main symbol of struggle and independence, though many disagree with his autocratic style of rule.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has declared Arafat "irrelevant," Israeli media hang on his every word.

Israeli Army Radio broadcast a special report Wednesday giving his biography and reviewing the past year, in which Arafat has faced internal political strife, frail health and an Israeli government that says it would like to see him ousted or dead.

"To sum up, it doesn't look like such a happy birthday for Arafat," radio reporter Shimrit Meir said.

Palestinian commentator Elias Zananiri told the radio that alongside the 76-year-old Sharon and opposition leader Shimon Peres, who turns 81 on Aug. 21, Arafat is a relative youngster.

"Age doesn't make a difference as long as you have the element of leadership," he said. "Arafat today, whichever way you look at it, is from the Palestinian point of view the leader who for the past 40 years, with all the good and bad things, all the errors and mistakes, remains the Palestinian leader."

Arafat was born in Cairo on Aug. 4, 1929, the fifth of seven children of Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa, a merchant killed in fighting in the 1948 Mideast war. A teenager at the time, Arafat ran arms and ammunition to his father and brother in the battle field.

He took up the Palestinian cause in Kuwait in 1958, transforming it from the story of powerless refugees to the central political issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since then, he has survived more than 50 assassination attempts and numerous military defeats, bouncing back after he and his fighters were thrown out of Jordan in 1970 and Lebanon in 1982.

He kept 18 rival factions under the PLO's umbrella and for decades kept the Palestinians in the spotlight, sometimes using aircraft hijackings and the slaying of civilians to do so.

In 1988, he accepted U.N. resolutions implicitly recognizing the Jewish state. Then, in perhaps his worst error, he supported Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, losing Western and Arab backing.

Weakened by his isolation, he entered peace talks with Israel in 1993, accepting a package of limited self-rule for the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a peace process that held out the prospect of a Palestinian state.

He returned to the territories in 1994 at the head of the newly constituted Palestinian Authority.

However, peace talks ended without agreement in early 2001, after violence erupted in September 2000.

Since then, Arafat has led his people in a struggle that has included more than 100 suicide bombings, though he insists he opposes such attacks.

During the current conflict, 3,041 people have been killed on the Palestinian side, and 970 people have been killed on the Israeli side.

Israelis take offense at Arafat's flights of rhetoric, including the oft-stated "million martyrs on the way to Jerusalem," but Palestinians cheer him on.