Event · Diplomacy11 November 2004

Yasser Arafat dies

رحيل ياسر عرفات

Exact day11 November 2004

Ramallah

Yasser Arafat, besieged in his Ramallah headquarters, fell ill in October 2004 and was flown to a military hospital near Paris, where his death was announced on 11 November 2004. He was buried at the muqata’a in Ramallah.

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His last weeks

From early October 2004, while under Israeli siege, Arafat showed symptoms of an illness that could not easily be diagnosed. On 29 October he was admitted to the Percy military hospital at Clamart, near Paris, where he soon fell into a coma; on 11 November 2004 the hospital announced his death.

Link to this chapter

Chapter evidence

  1. Yasir Arafat ↗

    PalQuest · Institute for Palestine Studies · section: Biography

    Editorial paraphrase · en

    Ill under siege from early October 2004; admitted to the Percy hospital near Paris on 29 October; death announced on 11 November 2004.

    Link to this citation

His burial

After an official ceremony in France and another in Cairo, his body was brought to Ramallah, where some hundred thousand Palestinians gathered, and he was laid to rest at his headquarters, the muqata’a. In 2012 his body was exhumed to test for polonium poisoning; Swiss experts considered poisoning probable, while Russian and French experts attributed his death to old age.

Link to this chapter

Chapter evidence

  1. Yasir Arafat ↗

    PalQuest · Institute for Palestine Studies · section: Biography

    Editorial paraphrase · en

    Buried at the muqata’a in Ramallah; exhumed in 2012, with differing expert findings.

    Link to this citation

Sources & evidence

Every trace has a source.

Contextual sources are further reading. Precise supporting passages appear alongside the chapters.

photograph · Wikimedia Commons

Mausoleo Arafat (Muqata, Ramallah) 01.JPG

The photograph shown with this event: Yasser Arafat’s mausoleum, Ramallah.

Published: date not recordedConsulted: 2026-09-28

Public domain: released by its author on Wikimedia Commons.

article · PalQuest · Institute for Palestine Studies

Yasir Arafat

Biography, Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (Institute for Palestine Studies).

Published: date not recordedConsulted: 2026-09-28

Reference metadata and an original summary only. No permission to copy or host the source’s text, photographs, audio or video is asserted.

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Dates & remembrance

11 November 2004 · day

11-11 · occurrence
Anniversary of the documented date.

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