Arafat’s image immortalised in photos 10 years on

A Palestinian family lights candles in front of a portrait of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on November 2, 2014, at a house in the West Bank town of Hebron. Hazem Bader/AFP Photo

RAMALLAH // In Jalazun refugee camp, Yasser Arafat’s image is everywhere.

From the giant portrait in Arafat Square to the walls of every family home, pictures of the man who embodied the Palestinian struggle are jealously guarded.

“Arafat is the father of the Palestinian cause: he lifted up the name Palestine and the rights of the refugees,” said Ahmed Massud, 90, who fled his home during the Nakba, or catastrophe, when Israel was established in 1948.

Chased out of his village near Tel Aviv, he found refuge near Ramallah in the Jalazun refugee camp.

“What I love about him is that he is both a historical and a national figure,” he said showing a picture of himself, much younger, standing next to the veteran leader who is dressed in his trademark fatigues and black-and-white keffiyeh headscarf.

“He is forever in our hearts and minds, he and the ideas he espoused,” Mr Massud said.

It is just one of many photos he has saved of the late president, who is better known as Abu Ammar.

“When Abu Ammar came back to the West Bank in 1994, I went to meet him with representatives of refugee camps from across the Palestinian territories,” he said.

His grandson, Jamal, was only six when Arafat died on November 11, 2004 in a hospital near Paris.

He also speaks of Arafat as “the symbol of Palestine”.

“It is thanks to him that we speak about the Palestinian question. He tried to free us and build us a Palestinian state.”

Because Arafat embodied the Palestinian struggle and fought against Israel before becoming a partner in the largely fruitless peace process, keeping a picture of him 10 years after his death is a way of thumbing your nose at the Israeli army, said Kamel Dweik, a civil servant working for the Palestinian Authority.

“When they raid a house and find a photo of the owners posing with Arafat, the first thing they do is rip it, stamp on it and beat up the owner,” said Mr Dweik, 38.

Jihad Nakhleh, who owns a small photo studio, says everybody wanted a picture with the charismatic leader.

“I don’t think there is any president in the world who has posed with as many of his citizens as Yasser Arafat,” Mr Nakhleh said.

“Even those who were against him have a photograph with him!”

* Agence France-Presse