Mr Yasser Arafat, the standard-bearer of Palestinian nationalism for nearly half a century who died in a French hospital, has been a near-prisoner of Israel in the ruins of his West Bank headquarters for almost three years.
Mr Arafat at the UN General Assembly in 1974
His status as the symbol of the Palestinians' fight for their own homeland has never been challenged and his death will leave a huge gap to be filled.
His death, at 75, marks the demise of a man who carved out a reputation as a great survivor after outliving nearly all his rivals and even cheating death when he walked away from the wreck of a plane crash in April 1992 in the Libyan desert.
Mr Arafat was born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Hussaini, on August 4th, 1929 - officially in Jerusalem but possibly in Cairo.
He joined in the 1948 war between Israel and its Arab neighbours that led to the foundation of the Jewish state.
Together with Khalil al-Wazir, Faruq Khaddumi, Salah Khalaf and Mahmud Abbas, he founded the Fatah movement in 1958 to fight the Jewish state.
In February 1969, Mr Arafat, who had taken the nom de guerreof Abu Ammar, was elected chairman of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Short, paunchy and usually sporting stubble, Mr Arafat rose to leadership through the force of his fiery personality, his acute instinct for political survival and his dedication to the cause.
After securing the leadership of the PLO, Mr Arafat began an odyssey that was to see him wind up in Tunisia after being expelled from Jordan by King Hussein's troops in 1970, and from Lebanon by Israeli forces, led by his nemesis Mr Ariel Sharon, in 1982.
With military options running out and the eruption of the domestically inspired and controlled Palestinian uprising or intifada in the West Bank and Gaza in 1987 he began to negotiate with Israel.
Mr Arafat renounced terrorism in December 1988 and recognised Israel's right to exist, prompting the United States to end a 13-year ban on talks with the PLO.
A Palestinian delegation was included in the Jordanian team to the 1991 Madrid conference that launched a Russian- and US-backed attempt to find a comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
As the Madrid talks dragged on, Israel and the representatives of the PLO began secret direct talks in and around Oslo, Norway. The resulting first Oslo agreement, signed in Washington in September 1993, ushered in Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.
Mr Arafat returned to the Palestinian territory in July 1994 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin and foreign minister Mr Shimon Peres.
But the peace process was derailed when a Jewish extremist gunned down Mr Rabin in November 1995.
Then US president Bill Clinton brought Mr Arafat and then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak to his Camp David presidential retreat in July 2000.
But the talks, aimed at a final peace settlement, collapsed, paving the way for the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising two months later.
Mr Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in early 1996.
Under heavy international pressure, he reluctantly agreed to appoint his first prime minister, Mahmud Abbas, in April 2003. Mr Abbas lasted less than four months in the job, however, after failing to persuade Mr Arafat to loosen his grip on the control of the security services.
Mr Abbas's successor, Ahmed Korei, endured an equally tempestuous relationship with Arafat.
In December 2001, the Israeli army encircled Mr Arafat in his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah, known as the Muqataa, and troops destroyed his fleet of helicopters in Gaza.