7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

in his view, the right of Palestinian refugees to return.

‘Arafāt’s decision was widely hailed by Palestinians, and

Barak was ousted from office in 2001 by Ariel Sharon,

whose visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in September

2000 had sparked a wave of Palestinian violence. In 2001,

following suicide attacks in Israel that Sharon blamed

‘Arafāt for instigating, ‘Arafāt was confined by Israel to his

headquarters in Ramallah. In October 2004, ‘Arafāt fell ill

and was transported for medical treatment to Paris, where

he died the following month.

Helmut Kohl

(b. April 3, 1930, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Ger.)

H

elmut Kohl was chancellor of West Germany from

1982 to 1990 and of the reunified German nation

from 1990 to 1998. He presided over the integration of

East Germany into West Germany in 1990 and thus became

the first chancellor of a unified Germany since 1945.

Kohl grew up in a conservative Roman Catholic family.

As a teenager in wartime Germany, he was drafted and sent

to basic training, but the war ended before he had to fight.

His interest in politics manifested itself early. In 1947 he

began working in a Christian Democratic Union (CDU)

youth organization in his native town. Kohl earned a doc-

torate in political science at the University of Heidelberg

in 1958. He was elected in 1959 to the Rhineland-Palatinate

state legislature and in 1969 to the state’s post of minister

president (prime minister). He soon developed a reputa-

tion as a capable administrator. He also became the CDU’s

national deputy chairman in 1969, and he was elected

chairman of the party in 1973.

Kohl entered the 1976 federal elections as the chancel-

lor candidate of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party,