After Arafat

November 12, 2004

Revered and reviled. Hero and villain. Essential and irrelevant. A Nobel Peace Prize winner. A pistol-packing terrorist. The father of his people. The reason they never became a country.

To call the legacy of Yasser Arafat mixed is quite an understatement. The controversial Palestinian leader who died Wednesday at age 75 never realized his dream of viable statehood for his people. In the end, he also was a persistent obstacle to it. Through terrorism, he drew the world's attention to the cause of the Palestinians and gave them a global identity.

But Arafat never installed for the Palestinians a functioning democracy. He held on to too much power for too long, even when doing so was clearly counterproductive to achieving a two-state solution to the endless Middle East conflict.

Arafat's death, coupled with Israel's recent decision to withdraw from settlements in Palestinian territory, creates an opportunity to resolve one of the world's most vexing and violent situations. Much will depend on whether the Palestinians' post-Arafat leadership can bring an end to terrorist attacks against Israel. Surely there are sensible elements waiting to emerge who realize that, for Palestinians, the present is terrible and the future will be bleak if they want Jewish blood more than peace. That is no path to statehood.

Arafat shared his 1994 Nobel with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, Israel's prime minister and foreign minister at the time, for their negotiation of the Oslo Accords. This was hailed as a landmark achievement, acknowledging Israel's right to exist and affording Palestinians land and self-determination.

But the accord never flowered, choked by old hatreds and distrust. Arafat balked at another peace deal in 2000 and lost his international credibility as Palestinian terrorists launched a new war on Israel.

His legacy will be worldwide awareness of the Palestinian problem -- and convincing evidence that terrorism is no solution.