USA Today · Atlanta, GA · 20 July 2004
CP-2004-048
Pressured, Arafat shuffles security leaders
Appointment of cousin triggered violence
From wire reports
Transcribed from the clipping
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat backed down in the face of a major challenge to his authority on Monday as he tried to defuse a crisis over corruption in his government. Responding to widespread public anger in Gaza over his appointment of a cousin as head of security there, Arafat reinstated a security chief whom he had removed from power days earlier.
The reinstated commander, Abdel Razak Majaide, will outrank Moussa Arafat, the cousin whose appointment Saturday fueled a weekend of violence in which militants attacked government offices to demand anti-corruption reforms.
How this transcription was made
Date confirmed on the page (eva-folio). Adjudicated corrected against the printed page: No masthead or folio on this strip; the byline is the standing line "From wire reports". The correction is forced by the folio on its slide-mate: s015_2 prints "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution / ajc.. Legibility partial; any passage that could not be read is omitted rather than reconstructed.
Context added by this archive
Small headshot of Arafat at right with the caption word "Challenged:" and the line "Yasser Arafat works Monday at his compound in Ramallah, West Bank." Credit: By Abbas Momani, AFP. The story is unbylined wire copy under the slug "From wire reports".
Cite this clipping
"Pressured, Arafat shuffles security leaders," USA Today, 20 July 2004. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2004-048. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2004-048
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2004-048.
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