Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) was a Palestinian statesman. He was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1968, and Palestinian president from 1996 until his death in 2004. When the new Palestine National Authority was formed in 1994 following the signing of a PLO-Israeli peace accord, he became its leader. He was awarded Nobel Peace Prize for 1994 for this peace accord which he shared with the Israeli statesman and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who negotiated the accord and his foreign minister Shimon Peres who played an important role in negotiating the accord.