A Man and his People
by Uri Avnery

Wherever he may be buried when he passes away, the day will come when his remains will be reinterred by a free Palestinian government in the holy shrines in Jerusalem.

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Yasser Arafat, 1929-2004

For nearly five decades, Yasser Arafat was a larger-than-life figure for those who admired him as well as those who hated and feared him, or, to be more precise, for those who hated and feared the Palestinian view of history, justice, and politics. Since the late 1960s, Arafat was the icon of the Palestinian cause. Like Che Guevara, Arafat's image on a poster, a T-shirt, or a television screen could convey rich and complex meanings and sentiments across wide and diverse social landscapes. With his trademark black-and-white checkered kuffiyah draped carefully over his shoulder so as to assume the proportions and shape of the map of Palestine, appearances by Arafat were almost always electrifying political events.

Arafat leaves a troubled legacy but no doubt that there is a Palestinian people
by Helena Cobban

But at least Arafat and his colleagues achieved this: Back in 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir voiced a judgment shared by many in the West when she said, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." But today, few people doubt that the Palestinian nation exists, and neither Israel nor its supporters can ignore the Palestinians' claim to establish a sovereign state in a portion of historic Palestine.

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