Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star correspondent

The huge protest march staged Sunday in support of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has drawn several remarks in his favor, as Palestinians throughout Lebanon showed support the president in his standoff with the Israeli Cabinet’s over its decision to expel him.
Mohammed, 29, also known as shibel, or lion cub, joined Arafat’s Fatah movement at an early age, and for him “the Palestinian President is a spiritual father to all the Palestinians and every Palestinian loves Abu Ammar.”
Mohammed, who is impressed by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said he still belonged to Fatah and his mission is to train youngsters how to handle weapons and prepare them to become future fighters.
Mohammed recalls the stories told by people older than him, of Arafat, when he was still a refugee like them.
“One day a woman called Umm Antar snatched Arafat’s machine gun and aimed it at him when he wouldn’t hide, ordering him to go down to the shelter to protect himself from the Israeli shelling. This happened in the Nabatieh refugee camp, which was wiped off the face of the earth at the end of the seventies,” Mohammed said, speaking of Arafat’s courage.
“I would follow Arafat even if he declares a separate state on the back of a donkey. We are with him. But our enemies are the Arab rulers first and then Israel and the US,” Mohammed said.
As for Hajj Abu Shawkat, a retired Fatah officer, he describes Arafat as “courageous, stubborn and of vivid memory.”
In 1973, Arafat was based in one of the military bases in Rashaya Wadi, Abu Shawkat said. “He ordered us to go across the Israeli border to the settlement of Shlomi and blow up a radar position that was used to gun down two Syrian planes. We implemented the orders and watched the radar get blown to bits after we hit it with 18 mortar shells.” He added that when the fighters came back Arafat ordered financial rewards for them.
Abu Shawkat also remembered that Abu Ammar was swift footed.
“When we walked alongside him, we could hardly keep pace with him. We had to jog to do that,” Abu Shawkat said.
Another Palestinian officer, Maher Abu Taher, commander of the Fatah division remembered Arafat’s last visit to the Ain al-Hilweh camp in 1982, just before the Israeli invasion. He also remembered how Arafat and his fighters left the country on board ships.
“On that day in Ain al-Hilweh, Arafat watched a military parade by the camp’s fighters in a local playing field. The parade featured some tanks sent from Libya for the first time. They were equipped with radars to monitor airplanes,” he recalled.
He added that as Arafat was delivering a speech, a few Israeli airplanes flew over the camp at low altitude. Arafat was moved by the sight and said literally, yelling to the planes overhead:
“Go tell (the late Israeli Premier Menachem) Begin and (former US President Ronald) Reagan that I am not scared of their F15 and F16 warplanes.”
He added that if Arafat returned to the camp now, as in 1965, the fighters would be ready to start
another revolution.