Yasser Arafat

Yasir Arafat was born Muhammad 'Abd Ar-Ra'uf Al-Qudwah Al-Husayni on August 24, 1929 in Cairo, Egypt, to a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother. He was raised in Cairo but always considered himself Palestinian. In the late 1940s, while a student in Egypt, he became an ardent Arab nationalist and adopted the name Yasir, after Yasir al Birah, a famous Arab resistance leader. When Arafat as 14, he was involved in gunrunning for Arab guerrillas in Gaza, a task he continued to perform during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. After the war, Arafat entered the University of Cairo, earning a degree in engineering in 1955. During his student days, he began to train secretly as a guerrilla, becoming an expert in demolitions and taking part in raids on British installations near the Suez Canal. After his graduation from the university, Arafat was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Egyptian army. He saw some combat at Port Said and Abu Kabir during the Suez war of October 29-November 6, 1956. I