When Arafat's illness was first reported--it was an unidentified blood disease--a London-based Palestinian journalist said that Israel might rue not having Arafat as a potential interlocutor. After Arafat's death, his succession was making the situation in Israel/Palestine cloudier (though it's early times to tell). His successors, all described as moderates, did not begin by condemning violence or terrorism. In his last years, the main Israeli accusation against Arafat was that he did nothing to suppress anti-Israeli violence. At least Arafat condemned the killing of civilians. The moderates that were to take his place initially at least did not even go that far. So was Arafat really the monster that serious English-language dailies depicted? In its obituary, the Financial Times carried this characterization to the physical level by saying of Arafat that he had an "unprepossessing physical appearance" and a "shifty appearance", which made the article in essence grotesque.

The condemnation of Arafat comes down, when all is said and done, to that he was willing to wield terror against Israel in the name of the Palestinian cause. Curiously, he is also condemned because the PLO adopted as its goal the creation of "a democratic society in Palestine where Muslims, Christians, and Jews could live together in complete equality", which is not an unfair characterization of Theodore Herzl's vision for a Zionist state. Israeli strategy against Palestinians has become notorious world-wide (except in the USA) for its use of terror. So who started what?

In the web, you can find sites that will provide equally long lists of Israeli and Palestinian children victims of terrorism. An Israeli historian, Benny Morris, made a reputation for himself by collecting evidence that in 1948-1949 Palestinians had mostly not fled but had been chased from their homes by Jews. Later, Morris used that reputation for fair scholarship as a podium from which to blast Arafat and Palestinians in general. Three Israeli PMs--Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon--had at one time or another been committed terrorists.

Some have criticized Arafat for not having been sufficiently accommodating with Israel, a state which in 1967 annexed and occupied Gaza and the West Bank and the least it wanted was to have as neighbor an independent Palestine. He reputedly missed the boat in the successful 1978 negotiations between Egypt and Israel at Camp David, to which he had not been invited and in which any direct Palestinian intromission would have been rejected. Aside from the fanciful and the extreme, there were some concrete accusations against Arafat. The one every critic seems to share was his presumed responsibility for the failure of the 2000-2001 Camp David talks. We shall get to that shortly.

The negative balance of Arafat's leadership was that he had not achieved a Palestinian state and on his death had left an impoverished, divided, and quarreling Palestinian population. His first strategic mistake was to try to act as if he ruled in Jordan. After heavy fighting, king Hussein expelled him and his followers (1971). There is no doubt that Arafat was opportunistic and he always tried to grab as much as he could, in lieu of which he would put up a bold front. Arafat co-opted the PLO after the Six-Days war (1967) showed that Arab states were powerless to advance Palestinian interests. As before that, with the exception of Jordan, these states had also shown very little disposition to integrate Palestinians into their societies, Arafat and the PLO had cause to branch out on their own (1968).

The Oslo process

They tried again to act tough in Lebanon, but the accusation that the Israeli invasion in 1982 was solely because of Arafat is untenable. Syria was installing missiles in the Bekaa valley and Hizbollah was already in the frontline against Israel in southern Lebanon. Sharon reputedly once said that the biggest mistake he had made in his life was not to kill Arafat when he could have during the invasion of Lebanon. In fact, if he was willing to allow Falangist Christians to massacre Palestinians in Sabra and Shatilla, the only reason why he didn't kill Arafat then is because he could not lay his hands on him.

Arafat is accused of dissembling in his 1988 recognition of Israel and in his renunciation of terrorism. It is usually argued that this came about at the time that Arafat and his organization had been ejected from Lebanon and the PLO's fortunes were at their lowest ebb. He is blamed for having supported Iraq's annexation of Kuwait.

There is no evidence that Arafat was at any time unwilling to negotiate with Israel after he took the momentous step of formally abandoning the objective of destroying Israel, to which most Palestinian extremists were still committed. The consequences of Arafat's 1988 commitment were the Oslo accords of 1993. And on the Gulf war, Arafat would have betrayed his constituency and would have suffered a catastrophic loss of authority if he had not backed the one state that at that point was willing to go the distance in support of Palestine. Once the military preliminaries had been disposed of, the civilian occupation of Kuwait was in part a Palestinian operation. Palestinians took over the Kuwaiti oil industry. Eyewitness accounts tell of European and American technicians escaping from Kuwait in SUVs over the desert between Iraqi tanks parked on the border with Saudi Arabia. USA tanks would have blown to bits any object moving between them in any direction. The Iraqis knew that Palestinians were manning their rearguard.

Somehow, Arafat is not given much credit for Oslo, which anyway is not made much of by pro-Israeli observers. Paradoxically, Arafat critics tend to emphasize the controversy that Oslo produced among Palestinians and the execration that Arafat got from extremists, particularly from Hamas. The Economist described Oslo as a "thicket". But the facts on this question speak clearer than they ever have on the Israel/Palestine problem. After Oslo, Arafat was not fomenting violence. If violence there was it came about not because but in spite of Arafat. The Nobel prize would not have been awarded to some one over whom there hung even the hint of double-dealing and terrorism. The obverse is that Israel, even under Rabin, procrastinated.

When Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli fanatic, the Oslo process scrunched against a rock field. After Peres' interim tenure as Rabin's successor, Israel voted for Netanyahu, who had made no secret of his opposition to Oslo. Israeli distrust and obstruction were the obstacles that Oslo could not overcome. Except for the Second Iraqi war, if ever in contemporary history there is a patent example of international deception, it is the one perpetrated by Israel on Arafat and Palestinians over Oslo. It is true that Arafat made empty threats about an unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence, but he knew, or he was mad (which he wasn't), that he had only the very abstract backing of world opinion behind him. During the Sharon years, Arafat probably did owe his personal survival to his international renown, but that wasn't getting him much more than that.

The last important act of the last diplomatic drama in which Arafat played was the 2002-2001 Camp David talks. Just as Oslo is downplayed, so this Camp David is overblown by his critics. This is probably because it is so obvious that, Intifada or no Intifada, suiciders or no suiciders, Sharon held all the cards starting in 2001 that Arafat's role was virtually nil. You could make anything you wanted of him. He was a loser. Since the least he had was a co-responsibility for the failure at Camp David, then losing was his own fault. Sharon was on top and he could do what he wanted, including pose as a statesman. Grant him bravery and generalship, but on the Palestinian issue he can only be described as a bully.

Bush the younger's years coincide exactly with Sharon's years. Among his priorities in the White House was to wean the Jewish vote away from the Democrats. Maybe, like the FT, he also thought that Arafat looked shifty. Bush is an ordinary type of guy apart from his extraordinary political talent. Ordinary Americans would tell you that Arafat looked like a terrorist. Bush and Sharon converged entirely on their takes on Arafat and Palestinians. For Bush, who has proven he most definitely is no statesman, Sharon was a statesman. The two created a tiny but powerful mutual admiration society

Israel will never relinquish control of Gaza

Nobody really knows what went on in Camp David during Clinton's lame duck presidency. Since Arafat is now dead--he was dead politically for a long time before his physical death--whatever is argued on this event will have a missing link. Clinton is a good starting point. Shortly after Camp David, he leaked to the New York Times his frustration over Barak's intransigence. It is said that Clinton owned the Jewish vote. He certainly went over big with Jewish celebrities. His wife Hilary was elected senator from New York with Jewish support. New York state has 18 million inhabitants. Some 12 million of these at least live within the metropolitan area of New York city. Anybody who underestimates the importance of the Jewish vote in NY is either a liar or a doofus.

When Clinton wrote his memoirs, he said that Barak's offer to Arafat could not be improved on. Some say that Barak went as high as 97% of the West Bank. Clinton mentions 91%. Just prior to Camp David, The Economist gave a word of warning to the incautious: Barak had awarded in his less than two years in power more construction permits in the West Bank than any previous Israeli PM. Again as per Clinton, Palestinians were also offered some vaguely advantageous deal on East Jerusalem. In 1996, Palestinians in East Jerusalem were an electoral constituency, so they weren't getting anything especially new here. It is entirely within the likely that, with Oslo behind him, Arafat might have been mistrustful and was expecting guarantees of some sort. Clinton gets off the hook of seeming too pro-Israel by saying that he might not have made it clear enough to Arafat that the last offer he communicated from Barak was the best he would ever receive from Israel. Did Clinton have a crystal ball?

Arafat is accused of secretly supporting the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada. But the same chorus that blames him for not disciplining Gaza is the one that in 2004 cried that Arafat could not keep Gaza in hand. By this time, Arafat had been bulldozed to a fraction of his Ramallah compound. When Sharon won two elections in a row, what Arafat should have done was resign. This would have been capitulation. But would that have stopped the terrorism or shamed Sharon into assuming a less aggressive stance on Palestinians?

Arafat did indeed fail. Hussein also failed. Iraq is a maw for Marines. Has Israel ensured its security for the future? Sharon says he intends to disengage from Gaza. This is probably another lie. Israel will never discontinue the occupation of Gaza, direct or indirect, and that for a simple reason: Gaza is a Petri dish of despair; despair breeds violence; suicide bombers are, as an Israeli officer put it, the ultimate intelligent weapon. Israel is trapped in a bad circle. It wants security; to get security it thinks it must act in a manner which makes Palestinians powerless and poorer, but the more misery it spreads the likely it makes it for terrorism to continue indefinitely. War on terror becomes more curious the more you dig into it. One thing it achieved is that America will never again seem the same that it was once for the rest of the world.