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11/21/2005:

"Blame It On Arafat"

Despite initial claims that Yasser Arafat's absence - as an 'obstacle' to peace - would reinvigorate the Arab-Israel peace process, events on the ground fail to point toward such a reality, one year after the powerful Palestinian leader's death.

The Israeli government's unfaltering commitment to unilateral action shows that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon still deems the Palestinian leadership 'irrelevant' to the peace process, a label that was exclusively pinned on Arafat for years before his death on November 11, 2004.

But if Arafat's mysterious illness and subsequent death in France represented the end of an era, it was because the absence of Arafat, even as a living symbol, was a matter of great consequence. That said, one must not indulge in misrepresenting the Palestinian struggle by reducing it to the legacy of one man.
zmag.org