Twelve years after Yasser Arafat died under mysterious circumstances, a museum in his honor —complete with a gift shop hawking replicas of his signature keffiyeh — opened Thursday in the West Bank.
The $7 million Yasser Arafat Museum, which took eight years to build, is located between his tomb and the office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
It includes the preserved rooms of the Muqata — or headquarters — in Ramallah where he and his associates were holed up during a 34-day siege by Israeli forces in the second intifada.
Also featured are Arafat’s trademark khaki uniform, checkered kaffiyeh, sunglasses and holstered pistol – all of which he sported when he famously declared at the UN in 1974 that he came “bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun.”
Other items on display are Arafat’s Nobel peace prize and medal awarded for his part in the defunct Middle East peace process and shared with Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
Space is also allocated for a requisite museum gift shop, selling a wide assortment of trinkets and tchotchkes – from sweatshirts and baseball caps bearing Arafat’s image, to mugs, books and a gift-boxed keffiyeh, the black and white scarf Arafat popularized.
Nasser al-Kidwa, a nephew of Arafat and a Fatah Central Committee member, said the museum does not focus exclusively on Arafat’s life.
“We want to show the whole story of the Palestinian people, from the dawn of the 20th century until 2004,” he told the Jerusalem Post. “This story is of 100 years of conflict and dispossession, [but] also the role of Arafat, who is the main figure in this Palestinian journey.”
Arafat “represents the biggest chapter in our political life,” museum director Mohammed Halayqa told reporters who toured the building before a ceremonial opening with Abbas and foreign dignitaries, the LA Times reported. “People miss Arafat.”
The museum traces almost 100 years of Palestinian history, including the Nakba – “the catastrophe,” as Palestinians call the period leading up to and after Israel’s creation in 1948 – until Arafat’s death near Paris in 2004.
Israel denied claims by Palestinians, including Arafat’s family, that it poisoned him. France last year closed its investigation of the allegations.
Arafat was a complicated and controversial guerrilla fighter who founded the Palestine Liberation Organization, which carried out a decades-long campaign of violence against Israel before he helped negotiate the peace accords.
For the last nine years, Palestinians have been under divided rule – with the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority ruling the West bank and the Islamic militant group Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip.
“The vacuum is something to be expected, when it comes to the loss of historic leaders,” said Nasser Kidwa, a former Palestinian ambassador to the UN and chairman of the foundation that oversees the museum, the LA Times reported. “The Palestinian situation is complicated internally as well as externally.”
Halayqa, the museum director, told The Guardian newspaper that Arafat’s legacy was too large to be contained in a single museum.
“He was a symbol of unity for the Palestinian people, a national leader, a freedom fighter and a father,” he said. “His life overlapped with the Palestinian experience, so we have tried to tell both stories together without intruding Arafat in events where he does not belong.”
