With Him and Without Him: Israel and the Palestinians in the Post-Arafat Era

Until he finally married Suha Tawil in his late 60s, Yasir Arafat fended off questions about his bachelor status by insisting that he was married to the Palestinian people. There is much truth to that claim. Arafat devoted himself exclusively to Palestinian politics since his days as a student activist in Cairo almost half a century ago, and for the past forty years, he has dominated a tempestuous and often bewildering political arena. His shortcomings and failures are legion, but he has one overriding accomplishment – moving the Palestinian issue to the forefront of the international political agenda. For that reason alone, he has become virtually synonymous with the Palestinian cause. Whether or not Arafat recovers his faculties and returns as a living symbol, he will almost surely not return as an active leader, and in the political sense, his departure from the scene means that the Palestinians have been widowed.