Yasser Arafat was born on August 24, 1929 in Cairo, Egypt.

After studying electrical engineering, he began to campaign for the rights of the Palestinians. In 1957, he founded the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine, from which the political party Fatah emerged in 1959.

In the 1950s and 1960s, he was actively involved in the violent struggle against Israel and eventually became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was founded by the Arab League.

In the mid-1980s, he began to rethink his position and started to achieve the goal of Palestinian independence by peaceful political means.

The first steps were the recognition of Israel and the rejection of the PLO Charter of 1964, which called for the destruction of the state. Subsequently, the reconciliation process with Israel, co-initiated by the American president, began.

In December 1994, Arafat and the Israeli politicians Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the conclusion of the Declaration of Principles on Temporary Palestinian Self-Government between the State of Israel and the PLO.

During a state visit to Wiesbaden as President of the Palestinian Autonomous Territories on September 19, 1996, he was received by Mayor Diehl in the ballroom of the town hall on behalf of Mayor Exner, who was ill.

Diehl paid tribute to Arafat's commitment to peaceful coexistence between the peoples of the Middle East. His guest thanked him for the warm welcome and then signed the city's Golden Book. In memory of his visit, he was presented with a doll for his daughter, who was born in July 1995.

Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004 in Clamart, France.