After Arafat

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the remarkable Yasser Arafat is that he died a natural death at the age of 75. (The good die young.) For 40 years, ever since he planted his first bomb in Galilee, violence had been his hallmark. More than a hallmark, it was his goal and obsession, his be-all and end-all and every breath - especially when he would talk about peace. Because by peace, he meant a pause in the hostilities long enough to gather his forces for the final battle of annihilation.

Until then, he would settle for whatever terror he could sow, blowing up schoolhouses and school buses, families at Passover seders, airliners full of un-suspecting passengers, old men and mothers-to-be . . . . He wasn't particular. An American diplomat or two in Khartoum, Israeli athletes at the Olympics, they made fine victims, too. Call him an equal-opportunity killer. Military objectives were well and good, but unarmed civilians were his target of choice. No one was too frail to escape the attention of the killers he loosed, even an old wheelchair-bound Jew on a Mediterranean cruise.

Though he never managed to wipe out the Jewish state (in some ways, he strengthened it by keeping it ever on guard), Yasser Arafat did succeed in draining the hope and future out of any Palestinian state. Maybe because, generation after generation, he saw its young only as a promising pool of martyrs. And that promise was fulfilled again and again.

Remarkably enough, he drew his last breaths while being tenderly nursed in a clean hospital bed. Fittingly enough, he would die in Paris, world capital of political cynicism. So much for the assumption that those who live by the Kalashnikov will die by the Kalashnikov.

Around his bed, like vultures, gathered his lavishly supported wife, now a French citizen, and various representatives of the sordid little kleptocracy he nominally ruled.

I say nominally because Yasser Arafat, aka Abu Death, headed so many guerrilla gangs, all reporting only to him, and had allied himself with so many terrorist organizations reporting to no one, that it would be a stretch to say anyone in particular now rules the ever aborning, ever dying Palestinian state now that its chief has proven mortal.

His grieving widow, possible successors, critics, rivals and hangers-on are now left to squabble over The Boss' political legacy, not to mention his hidden bank accounts. Not since Huey Long was gunned down has there been such a crowd of would-be successors; the plans for his funeral in Cairo brought to mind an old-fashioned mob summit in the Catskills.

If you seek his monument, just look around: Gaza, which has been a hellhole since Samson's time, remains one. Arafat himself had been confined to his ruined headquarters at Ramallah, where, between Israeli raids, he received a steady dribble of gullible visitors from the West. Now the debris around his last redoubt is being cleared away so he can be put to unrest there.

Meanwhile, the people that Yasser Arafat was supposed to serve and protect still struggle to survive in the divided, brutal little enclave he left them. No wonder the Israelis are trying to wall themselves off from his proto-state, the way one would from a plague.

The open secret of the Palestinian struggle over the last, wasted half-century of hate is that it was never about establishing a Palestinian state. If it had been, Yasser Arafat would have accepted one at Camp David, where he was offered Gaza, almost all the West Bank, and even a slice of Jerusalem, including rights to the Temple Mount holy to both Jew and Arab. He could have gotten even more if he'd hung around to make a peace offer of his own. Instead, he walked out and restarted the intifada, with the usual fatal results.

Yasser Arafat devoted his life not to creating an Arab state but to destroying the Jewish one. After signing each solemn peace agreement, he would quietly assure Arab audiences he had not forgotten the real goal: "We plan to eliminate the State of Israel . . . . We will make life unbearable for the Jews . . . . We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem." - Yasser Arafat, Nobel Peace Prize winner, to a select group at Stockholm in 1996. If he was interested in an Arab state of Palestine, it was only as a beachhead.

Has any people ever been so cursed by its choice of leaders? At least since the partition of British-ruled Palestine in 1947, not to mention the recommendation of the Peel Commission in 1937, one side in this long-running dispute (some say it goes back to Ishmael v. Isaac) has been willing, despite its own crazies, to settle for two states in one holy land. But Yasser Arafat, and before him (yes, there was a Palestinian leader before him) Ahmed Shukhairy, and before him the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (though he spent the war years in Berlin) would always nix the deal on behalf of Palestine's Arabs.

As the late, eloquent Abba Eban once commented, the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The result has been a river of blood between two kindred peoples who share a long if uneven history of collaboration and achievement.

Alive, at least Yasser Arafat was immobilized and isolated, his schemes transparent. Dead, he leaves his successors free to start another round of the Peace Process that somehow always leads to war.

Now, once again the Roadmap to Peace will be put on the table, and once again the Israelis may swallow the bait, leaving themselves vulnerable to another intifada. In short, Lucy is getting ready to hold the football once more, and Israel will be urged to play the hapless Charlie Brown by the usual suspects: the United Nations' Kofi Annan, the European Union's Jacques Chirac (Yasser Arafat's final host), Britain's Tony Blair, all the fumbling Old Middle East Hands in the State Department, and, by the time it's over, maybe this newly re-elected American president, too. Forgetting what it's like to live with a Fallujah next door, George W. Bush might like to play Bill Clinton in this familiar pageant with the unhappy ending.

Even those Palestinian leaders who might be genuinely interested in a settlement will find little popular support in the political culture that Yasser Arafat shaped over the decades and still shapes in death - a culture in which the contender who makes the most blood-curdling noises is guaranteed the support of the Street.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the more violent segment of Yasser Arafat's own party, Fatah, all stand to inherit his bloody mantle, while the nonentities with the official titles who are now taking office may not matter much. That's because Yasser Arafat made sure his ministers stayed nonentities. Lest anyone but himself be at the center of the tangled web of authority he left behind.

Once upon a time, about a decade or so ago, some of us thought peace might actually come to the Mideast. We even thought it was inevitable. It made so much sense. Even a few years back, we admired Bill Clinton's and Ehud Barak's futile efforts at Camp David. We'd overlooked only one detail: This is the Middle East.

Even now, the Palestinians could decide to follow one of the innumerable roadmaps to peace, disband their terrorist organizations, cease their propaganda, abandon suicide attacks, stop teaching hatred to their young . . . and substitute deeds for empty promises. But to do that, they would have to turn their backs on Yasser Arafat's whole, hateful legacy, which is about to be celebrated by ululating mobs whipped into a frenzy by his passing.

There's always been a light at the end of this tunnel: a two-state solution. But there's been no tunnel. Could Yasser Arafat's passing somehow open one? For not until his death grip on Palestinian opinion is broken can there be any realistic hope of peace. It would take a miracle for someone to emerge who could lead this long ill-led people into a peaceful state of their own.

But take hope - that part of the world is known for miracles. One millennial day, peace will come to the Mideast. One has to believe it will - as a matter of faith. Because reason has been all but exhausted. Yasser Arafat saw to that. Townhall