The Chimera Vanishes

In today's Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens offers a brief Arafat retrospective and reminds us of the hope inherent in the world's oldest terrorist's demise:

Once in power in Ramallah, the abuses became much worse. Critics of his government were routinely imprisoned and often tortured. In 1999, Muawiya Al-Masri, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, gave an interview to a Jordanian newspaper denouncing Arafat's corruption. He was later attacked by a gang of masked men and shot three times. (He survived.)

Yet for all this, Arafat continued to ride the wave of international goodwill. The Europeans gave him the Nobel Peace Prize. The Clinton administration saw him as the one man who could "deliver" the Palestinians to make peace with Israel. The peace camp in Israel, championed by the late Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, more or less agreed; to them, Arafat was the thug who'd keep the Palestinian street quiet. Arafat strung them along, more or less, until his bluff was called by the Israeli peace offer at Camp David in July 2000.

After that, there was just no point in keeping up appearances, and so came the intifada. It was a premeditated act. As Arafat had already told an Arab audience in Stockholm in 1996, "We plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. . . . We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem."

It goes without saying that Arafat failed in that endeavor. The Israelis belatedly realized that the maximum they could concede was less than the minimum Arafat would accept, and refused to deal with him. For its part, the second Bush administration cut off the international life support. In this sense, Arafat's illness--so far undisclosed by his doctors--can easily be diagnosed: He died of political starvation.

What remains? Very little, I suspect. None of his deputies can possibly fill his shoes, which are those of a personality cult, not a political or national leader. There is nothing to unite Palestinians anymore, either; their loyalties to the cause will surely dissipate in his absence. Arafat was remarkable in that he sustained the illusion he created till the very end. But once the magician walks off the stage, the chimera vanishes.