Musa Arafat

Musa Arafat , Arabic موسى عرفات, DMG Mūsā ʿArafāt (*? In Jaffa ; † September 7, 2005 in Gaza ), was major general and head of the Palestinian military intelligence service .

Musa was a cousin of Yasser Arafat . He had founded the Fatah movement with him and held high positions of power, but had many enemies both inside and outside Fatah. Musa Arafat has been repeatedly associated with corruption and arbitrariness.

Life

Musa Arafat was born in Jaffa. His father was from Gaza and his mother from Jerusalem. In 1948 the family emigrated to Gaza, where Musa completed his school education. In 1961 he began studying law at the University of Cairo . In the final year of his studies, he was arrested by Egyptian authorities. Musa Arafat also studied at a military academy in Yugoslavia and completed his studies there with a master's degree . In the early 1980s he took part in numerous military training courses in Egypt, Syria, Vietnam, China and the USSR. At the Six-Day War Musa Arafat took from the Syrian side. He also fought against Israel in the Battle of Karame . He was arrested in the wake of Black September . Musa Arafat also spent several years in Syrian custody. Due to the Lebanon War , he had to leave Lebanon in 1982, where he commanded a special unit. Afterwards he was deputy head of the Palestinian military intelligence service for many years. In 1994 he returned to the Gaza Strip, where he established and led the Military Intelligence Service. He was also head of Force 17 and one of the most powerful men in the Gaza Strip. He had the rank of major general , was married, had two daughters and a son, and had numerous grandchildren.

Musa Arafat's appointment as police chief of the Gaza Strip by Yasser Arafat was met with violent protests, which resulted in the temporary declaration of a state of emergency. After only two days as police chief in office, he was replaced by his predecessor Abd ar-Raziq al-Madschaida .

death

Musa Arafat, who had survived several murder attempts, was shot dead by Palestinian militants on September 7, 2005 in the city of Gaza.

Newspapers reported that about 80 men, some of them masked, broke into his house on the night of September 7, 2005 and dragged him into the street after a gun battle with his bodyguards, in order to kill him with 23 shots. Although only 200 meters from the government center, the assassins were able to shoot around them, some of them with grenade launchers, for about an hour without being bothered by the Palestinian security forces. Therefore, the suspicion was initially expressed that members of the government might be behind the murder. The People's Resistance Committee , which is made up of members from various radical groups, claimed responsibility. "Arafat's corruptibility" was later named as the motif. Another statement referred to him as a "collaborator" (with Israel). In contrast, the murdered man's son, Nahmal Arafat, himself a high-ranking intelligence officer, who was kidnapped in the course of the attack , was released the next day through the mediation of an Egyptian delegation.