UNITED NATIONS — Yasser Arafat’s nephew, Nasser Al-Kidwa, will accompany former Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is scheduled to visit Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus this weekend. Mr. Al-Kidwa’s visit will renew a complex history of relationship between two infamous Middle Eastern families that have dominated the region’s politics for much of the last century.

The president of the Arab League, Nabil el-Arabi, today announced the appointment of Mr. Al-Kidwa as a deputy to Mr. Annan, who was recently named special envoy to Syria of both the United Nations and the Arab League.

Mr. Al-Kidwa served as ambassador in the Palestinian observer mission here before returning to Ramallah in 2005. After ending his high profile, 18-year Turtle Bay stint, the Arafat scion played a minor, mostly behind the scenes role in Palestinian Arab politics. He was said by several observers to be waiting for the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahoud Abbas, to vacate the top post before entering local politics in earnest.

Today’s announcement surprised some here at the United Nations, where two officials who spoke to the Sun last week said that Mr. Annan had initially rejected the candidacy of the Palestinian scion and was looking elsewhere for an Arabic-speaking deputy. But the former secretary-general’s spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said today that Mr. Al-Kidwa “has been appointed by the League of Arab States” AND denied that Mr. Annan had “rejected” the candidacy. 

Mr. Annan represents Secretary General Ban and the Arab League. Mr. Ban was said by several U.N. officials to have “swallowed” the appointment unhappily after conducting an icy relationship with his predecessor. Nevertheless, aides to the Secretary General say that it was Mr. Ban who suggested to the Arab League that Mr. Annan would represent both in Syria .

It remains to be seen how the beleaguered Damascus strongman, who took power at Syria in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez Al-Assad, will approach the renewal of a long history of rollercoaster relations between the Assads and the Arafats.

After Mr. Al-Kidwa’s uncle was chased out of Jordan in September 1970, Arafat arrived in Lebanon, which even then was under heavy Syrian influence. Assad’s troops started conducting raids into camps controlled by the Arafat-led Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was perceived as competition and threat to the Damascus Allawite clan. The raids culminated in a Syrian-backed massacre at the Palestinian camp of Tel al Zaater.

The animosity reached an even higher peak when Assad accused Arafat of involvement in a 1983 Sunni uprising at the Syrian city of Hama. The uprising led to one of the bloodiest massacres in the region’s history, in which Assad razed Hama and as many as 20,000 of its citizens.

Things got worse later in the decade, after Arafat started to tilt toward the West from the Soviet Union. Al-Assad feared that a role he had always cherished, as major patron of the Palestinian Arab cause and as a top regional power, would be weakened by Arafat’s defection. Damascus started supporting Arafat’s Palestinian rivals – Abu Musa, Ahmad Jibril, George Habash, Nayif Hawatmeh.

After the 1993 Oslo accords between Arafat and Israel, Arafat further challenged Damascus by openly courting the friendship of Rifaat Assad, the president’s exiled brother who was a major rival to the Syrian strongman. Assad’s defense minister, Mustafa Tlass, called Arafat “Son of 60,000 whores,” and accused him of selling Jerusalem out to the Jews.

But after Hafez Al-Assad’s death, Arafat, known for sharp political u-turns, turned his back on the challenger to the throne, Rifaat Assad, courting instead the Syrian strongman’s son and hand-picked heir. As reward, The Palestinian leader was allowed to attend Hafez Al-Assad’s state funeral.

Nevertheless, Bashar Assad, who has surrounded himself with his father’s advisers, has long allowed rival organizations to Arafat’s party, Fatah, to operate from Damascus. Those parties, including Hamas and Palestinian Jihad, often challenged Arafat directly, and actively fought with his successor, Mr. Abbas.

Now the younger Al-Assad’s father, of Hama infamy, is long gone. But Arafat’s nephew, Mr. al Kidwa, may use the opportunity of new Assad-perpetrated massacres to revive a dwindling political career. 

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This article was corrected from an earlier edition to more accurately descirbe the origin of Mr. Annan’s mission.