10 Years on, Arafat's Image Immortalized in Photos
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 90-year-old Ahmed Massud who fled his home during the Nakba, or catastrophe, that befell the Palestinians when Israel was established in 1948.
Chased out of his village near Tel Aviv, he found refuge near Ramallah in the Jalazun refugee camp where he jealously guards the memory of the late Palestinian leader, who is better known as Abu Ammar.
"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," Massud told AFP, his voice reedy.
It is just one of many photos this elderly Palestinian has saved of the late president.
"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 recalled.
His grandson, Jamal, was only six when Arafat died on November 11, 2004 in a hospital near Paris.
Today he is 16 and 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," he told AFP.
Because Arafat literally 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, says 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 Dweik, 38.
"It's like saying to them 'Arafat is still alive among us whether you like it or not'."
Dweik also has a picture of himself standing next to Arafat from the year 2000. But he has hidden all his pictures so they are not found during Israeli raids on the camp which is home to some 13,000 refugees from 35 different Palestinian towns and villages that no longer exist.
"Yasser Arafat represents a lot of things for me. He is still alive in our spirit and we miss him greatly, particularly in recent years because his death dealt a harsh blow to the Palestinian cause," he explained.
Not far away is a small studio owned by Dweik's friend, Jihad Nakhleh, which was the first photographic shop to be opened in the camp.
A former employee of the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, Nakhleh says everybody wanted a picture with the charismatic leader.
"Every place Arafat visited, everyone wanted to have their picture taken with him and they wanted the pictures right away," he said.
After his return from 27 years in exile, Arafat was not shy of having his picture taken, and was photographed in every corner of the Palestinian territories.
Whether it was visiting the families of the "martyrs", prisoners who had been freed, or walking around the camps, towns and villages, it was all just another chance to add to the huge family photo album.
"I don't think there is any president in the world who has posed with as many of his citizens as Yasser Arafat," Nakhleh said.
"Even those who were against him have a photograph with him!"
Source: Agence France Presse
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