Yasser Arafat, according to PLO tradition a scion of the notable Husseini family, was born in 1929, probably in Cairo. His father was a relatively prosperous Gaza food merchant. He claims to have taken part in the Egyptian army’s invasion of the Negev in May 1948, though this seems unlikely. After studying civil engineering at Cairo University he drifted to Kuwait, where in 1959 he and other exiles set up the clandestine Palestine National Liberation Movement, or Fatah, and embarked on five years of fund-raising, propaganda, and armchair warfare.

Source: Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims (p. 364)