idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and cirrhosis . Early life   Birth and childhood A portrait of young Arafat, 1940s Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo to Palestinian parents. [ 1 ] His father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza; whose mother, Yasser's paternal grandmother, was Egyptian . Arafat's father