On September 28, 1991 (the 21st of the eighth lunar month), Arafat was re-elected President of Pakistan.

Arafat was re-elected as the president of the Palestinian state at the 20th meeting of the Palestinian National Council held on the 28th. The meeting also elected a new executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The executive committee consists of 18 members, and Arafat is the chairperson of the executive committee.

Since 1968, Arafat has been chairperson of the Pakistan Liberation Organization (PLO) and leader of Fatah (the largest group in the PLO). In 1993, he led the PLO to reach a peace agreement with the Israeli government. In 1994, he won the Nobel Peace Prize with Israel's Rabin and Peres.

Arafat was one of the 7 sons and daughters of a wealthy businessman whose wife was related to the anti-Zionist Grand Mufti (Palace of Shariah Explanation) of Jerusalem, Amin-Husseini (died 1974). Arafat studied at Cairo University and graduated as a civil engineer. While in Egypt, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Students' Union, and was president of the Palestinian Students' Union from 1952-1956. He also served in the Egyptian Army and participated in the Battle of Suez in 1956. After the Battle of Suez, Arafat went to Kuwait, worked in the government as an engineer and opened his own contracting company. While there, he was one of the co-founders of Fatah, which later became the main military component of the PLO. After serving as chairperson of the PLO, he became commander-in-chief of the Palestinian Revolutionary Armed Forces in 1971 and director of the PLO's political department two years later. Since then, he has increasingly devoted himself to seeking a political solution rather than confronting Israel with confrontation and terrorism. In November 1974, Arafat became the first representative of a non-governmental organization, the PLO, to address a plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly. He officially visited many Soviet bloc countries, but his contacts with Western leaders were mostly informal due to political recognition of the sensitivity of the PLO issue. In 1982, he became the target of criticism from Syrian-backed factions within the PLO and by Syrians. This criticism escalated after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, forcing Arafat to abandon his headquarters in Beirut at the end of August 1982 and establish a new one in Tunis. In 1987, he moved to Baghdad, Iraq. As a result of the bridging of divisions in the PLO ranks, Arafat was able to re-strengthen his leadership. On November 15, 1988, the "State of Palestine" was proclaimed; on April 2, 1989, Arafat was elected president of a hypothetical Palestinian state at the Central Committee of the Palestinian National Council (the PLO's governing body).