A farewell to arms?

Byline: The Register-Guard

With his death, Yasser Arafat finally offers the Palestinian and Israeli people something he could not sustain with his life: hope.

Hope that the Palestinian national movement will find in Arafat's successor a leader who will know what to do when an Israeli prime minister agrees to an independent Palestinian state encompassing most of the land Israel occupied in 1967, as Ehud Barak did at Camp David in 2000.

Hope that the long-suffering Palestinian people will find in Arafat's successor a leader with the courage to renounce terrorism, cronyism, corruption and the self-destructive politics of perpetual conflict.

Hope that current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will find in Arafat's successor a credible negotiating partner who will eliminate Sharon's principal excuse for ignoring the U.S.-sponsored road map for peace.

Hope that President Bush will find in Arafat's successor a compelling reason for the United States to vigorously reassert its leadership in the Middle East peace process.

Hope that the greater Middle East will find in Arafat's successor a moderate, pragmatic statesman who will demand an immediate end to the violence and a resumption of direct talks on implementation of the road map.

Such hopes seemed far-fetched just a few weeks ago, a testament to how enormous an obstacle to progress Arafat had become. Despite his almost mythic status as the warrior who made the world pay attention to the plight of Palestinians, Arafat's fundamental flaws as a political leader prevented him from delivering on his promises.

In the Western world, and among Israelis, those flaws are sure to color Arafat's legacy. The Arafat who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Israeli Prime Minister Yithzak Rabin for signing the Oslo peace accords is, in their view, an aberration.

Stubborn to a fault and bordering on paranoid, Arafat refused to share power and created a dysfunctional government that ultimately failed his people.

Arafat's most infamous failure was the refusal to compromise on Palestinian demands for control of Jerusalem and a right of return for Palestinian exiles that torpedoed the Camp David talks in 2000. It's entirely possible to envision a more diplomatic Arafat being able to claim credit today for the birth of an independent Palestinian state.

Instead, he will be remembered by many for leaving his people teetering on the edge of anarchy, so hopeless and jaded by his relentless defiance that some of them deliberately blow themselves and innocent civilians to bits inside Israeli buses and restaurants.

Arafat's life contains the grist for significantly differing legacies, depending on a person's point of view. Freedom fighter or terrorist, leader of an oppressed people or deluded despot.

But the fact that his departure from the bloody theater of Middle East conflict is the occasion for such high hopes is no small legacy in itself. Now it's up to President Bush, Prime Minister Sharon and the Palestinian leadership to do their utmost to address those hopes.