Co-founder of al-Fatah 1957 and president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969. His support for Saddam Hussein after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait 1990 weakened his international standing, but he was subsequently influential in the Middle East peace talks and in 1993 reached a historic peace accord of mutual recognition with Israel, under which the Gaza Strip and Jericho were transferred to PLO control. He returned to the former occupied territories 1994 as head of an embryonic Palestinian state, and in 1995 reached agreement on further Israeli troop withdrawals from areas in the West Bank. He took the unprecedented step Oct 1995 of inviting the terrorist organization Hamas to talks on Palestinian self-rule. He was elected president, with almost 90% of the popular vote, of the self-governing Palestinian National Council 1996. He was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Peace jointly with the then Israeli president Yitzhak Rabin and foreign minister Shimon Peres. In the 1970s Arafat's activities in pursuit of an independent homeland for Palestinians made him a prominent figure in world politics, but in the 1980s the growth of factions within the PLO effectively reduced his power. He was forced to evacuate Lebanon 1983, but remained leader of most of the PLO and in 1990 persuaded it to recognize formally the state of Israel.
