Palestinati the time writing,
leauce Arafat was still clinging to life in a Paris hospital. But, whatever the short-term outcome, it would seem that his remarkable five-decade political career is drawing to a close.
Any assessment needs to balance his undoubted achievements - principally the crystallisation of the Palestinians as an independent political entity - against the failures and sell-outs which have characterised much of the past twenty five years. His passing leaves many unresolved questions, just as his life contained many controversies, and several mysteries.
The first of these relates to his birth in 1929, to the eminent Palestinian Husseini family. Whether born in Jerusalem, Cairo or Gaza, Arafat - like many young Palestinians of his generation - spent his childhood in both Palestine and Egypt.
Although this easy movement came to an end with the partition of Palestine and Israel's defeat of the Arab armies in 1947-8, Arafat's family did not themselves become refugees.
His family in Jerusalem's Old City, remained until bulldozed by the Israelis following the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.
By then, Arafat was already Arafat in 1979 an active fighter for Palestinian liberation. While studying engineering at Cairo University, Aratat became the 60s generation. leader of the Palestinian Students Union, and by 1959 was able to use this position to establish Fatah, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement.
By this time, most Arab states including Egypt under the nationalist Nasser regime - were engaging in strenuous covert efforts to reach an agreement with Israel, at the expense of the Palestinians.
In an attempt (apparently at the behest of the US government) to create a compliant alesuntan organisanion, 11 1964 Nasser set up the PLO, to be led by the diplomat Ahmed Shukeiry. "the only way to liberate Palestine", the PLO under Shukeiry carried out no attacks while Arafat's Fatah and other small guerrilla groups carried out dozens of attacks.
The 1967 war, in which Israel occupied the remainder of Palestine, provided an opportunity which Arafat grasped.
It exposed the inefficiency, even cowardice, of the regular Arab armies (years later, Arafat became a hero for many western radicals during the 1968 uprisings, but as a social conservative was always an unlikely symbol for Arafat boasted that the PLO had lost more men defending the Beirut rubbish dump from Israeli attack in 1982, than had the entire Arab armies in detence Jerusalem in 1967); and it brought hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, many with military training, under direct Israeli rule.
Guerrilla attacks, and Israeli retaliation, increased massively as Israel tightened its grip on the occupied territories, and began the establishment of settlements. In 1968, this led to the Battle of Karameh, in which Fatah fis base if Blaraeli attack on
Despite heavy Palestinian losses, this was the first occasion on which the Israeli army had faced a military reverse, and it galvanised the Palestinians, and indeed the whole Arab world. Within a year, Fatah had seized control of the PLO from Shukeiry and his Egyptian sponsors; in 1969 alone, the PLO carried out over 2000 attacks on
Arafat became a hero for many western radicals during the 1968 uprisings, but as a social conservative was always an unlikely symbol for the 60s generation.
It was during this period that the PLO amended its charter, defining its goal as a democratic secular state in Palestine, and began a series of clandestine meetings with Israeli dissidents in Europe.
It is likely that, even then, Arafat's intention was to use this as a means to reach an agreement with the Israeli state, leaving him as head of a truncated Palestine.
Unlike the more radical PFLP and DFLP, Arafat rejected the strategy of Arab revolution leading to ring to seek ahiances wiffere existing Arab regimes.
He sought diplomatic pressure on Israel, backed up by the threat of armed attacks across the border.
This strategy faced its strongest challenge following the disaster of the Lebanese Civil War of the 1970s, and the Israeli invasion of 1982.
Across the refugee camps, PLO members, disappointed at the failure of the PLO to defend Palestinians, and dismayed at the growing evidence of political and financial corruption, joined the rebellion against Arafat's leadership, which culminated in the "Camps War" of 1984-5.
The dissidents, however, missed the point, posing a "military" against a "political" strategy, rather than addressing the real question of how to build a mass struggle, with both political and military elements.
The uneasy truce which followed this crisis lasted until the first Intifada erupted in December 1987.
The Intifada, although obviously a mass uprising against Israeli occupation, was widely seen as a rising also against Arafat and an increasingly out-of-touch exile leadership.
For the first time since the "Arab Revolt" of 1936-9, it showed the potential for mass civilian struggle against occupation and oppression. Despite brutal repressive defeat the Intifada, and was forced to turn to Arafat to act is its surrogate in governing the Palestinian people and lands.
Israeli PM Rabin famously insisted that Arafat rule "Without the High Court and without the civil rights movement" - two elements which have constrained Israel's potential for unbridled barbarism.
Arafat did not disappoint the Israelis. The past ten years, since the signing of the Oslo Agreement and the return of Arafat and his coterie to Palestine, have seriously weakened and demoralised the Palestinian
The turn to Islamist forces, and to the tactic of "suicide bombing", testity to the destruction by Israel, aided by Arafat, of the popular institutions which led the first Intifada.
This then is Arafat's legacy - a divided Palestinian movement, political repression and financial corruption, and the likelihood of a bitter, possibly bloody, struggle for succession, in which various discredited figures, most of them backed by Israel and the US, vie to lead the Palestinians to yet further disasters.