Hundreds of Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank held candlelit vigils on Tuesday, marking the 5th anniversary of the death of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Palestinians took to the streets and marched to Arafat's gravesite, where they lit candles and held prayers. In Gaza Strip, a local Fatah supporter organised a similar vigil in his office, where posters and videos of the late Palestinian leader were displayed.Earlier on Tuesday, the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers of detaining dozens of its members to stop them marking the 5th anniversary of the death of Fatah founder Yasser Arafat.Hamas and Fatah have repeatedly traded accusations of arrest campaigns against supporters of the two groups in Hamas-run Gaza and the Fatah-dominated West Bank. Over a year of Egyptian mediation failed to reconcile the two groups or to persuade them to take steps towards that end.Arafat established the first Fatah movement cell in Kuwait in 1958, advocating armed struggle against Israel, as a means of liberation for the Palestinians.In 1969, he was elected the President of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), changing it into a dynamic force making the Palestinian cause known worldwide.After the Madrid talks and the Gaza-Jericho self rule accord was signed between the late Arafat and the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Arafat returned to Gaza in July 1994, moving the Palestinian leadership back to the West Bank and Gaza.He was awarded a Nobel peace prize in 1994 alongside Rabin and gained a degree of international recognition and respect on the world stage after decades as the embodiment of the Palestinian fight for a state.Arafat spent his declining years in Ramallah, during which he was isolated and virtually imprisoned by an Israeli siege, caged in a few musty rooms of a smashed headquarters. Accused by Israel of fomenting violence after peace talks failed in Camp David in 2000, he was shunned by Washington as an obstacle to peace.A leader and a hero to his people, Arafat was close to the general public who related to their President as one of the people. His charisma and the perception of being approachable by all made him loved on a personal level.Five years after his death, it is not clear whether his vision of an independent Palestine will ever be fulfilled.
