Yasser Arafat

Legacy of terror will long survive Yasser Arafat G. Jefferson Price III continues his tradition of Israel-bashing and fawning on the Palestinians in his latest column, "Palestinians pay tribute not just to Arafat, but to an idea" (Opinion Commentary, Nov. 14), in which he has trouble stating the obvious about one of the world's most horrific and prolific mass murderers. While Mr. Price concedes the existence of Palestinian terrorists (excluding Mr. Arafat and the PLO) and that "terrorism remained a tool of the battle for liberation," he fails to explain what was supposed to be "liberated."

WASHINGTON - The day after Yasser Arafat died, USA Today carried a big, bold headline that caught my eye. It said: "Arafat Dies, Leaves Void." All I could think of when reading that headline was its double meaning. Yasser Arafat left a void of leadership, with no formal successor. But he also left a void of achievement. And it is that second void that really matters, considering that he led the Palestinian movement for some 40 years. You will pardon me if I don't join in the insipid chorus about how Mr. Arafat's great achievement was the way he represented the "aspirations" for statehood of the Palestinian people and, through terrorism and resistance, put the Palestinian cause on the world map. Excuse me, but Mr. Arafat put the Palestinian cause on the world map in 1974, when he was invited to address the U.N. General Assembly.

ISRAEL'S FINANCE minister and former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, noted on the day of Yasser Arafat's death that Mr. Arafat did not have the stature of Arabs who have signed peace treaties with Israel, men such as Egypt's Anwar el Sadat and Jordan's King Hussein. Mr. Netanyahu, who as prime minister shared plenty of culpability in the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, was speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer. What he did not note was that, unlike Mr. Arafat, President Sadat and King Hussein were the heads of undisputed sovereign states.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank - The rich and the poor of Bethlehem found something to agree on yesterday: The funeral and burial of Yasser Arafat on Friday marked the end of a man who had embodied their cause but did little to improve their lives. Arafat's grave in Ramallah, 20 miles from here, already seemed a world away, and his death a distant memory. Arafat seemed a distraction yesterday. The jobless remained jobless, the bitter remained bitter, the issues dividing Palestinians and Israelis no closer to being resolved.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinians buried Yasser Arafat here yesterday amid chaos and outpourings of grief, after mourners firing guns in the air engulfed the helicopter that carried his flag-draped casket from his funeral in Cairo and briefly wrested the coffin from an honor guard. Crying, screaming and fighting to get closer, members of the crowd overwhelmed police early on and climbed the walls of the presidential compound, awaiting two Egyptian helicopters carrying Arafat's body and some of the Palestinian leader's longtime aides.

If there was a single face for the bloody, divisive, maddening Israeli-Palestinian conflict of the past 35 years, it was Yasser Arafat's. For different Americans, that face represented hate and violence or hope and salvation. It was a legacy of polarization that Arafat apparently took to his grave. As he lay in a coma in a military hospital outside Paris, some American Jewish leaders called him a failed leader who squandered chances for peace between his people and Israel; others labeled him a terrorist whom the world would not miss.

NATIONAL Summit seen as risk for Blair British Prime Minister Tony Blair's two-day summit with President Bush carries enormous political risk for him if he returns to London empty-handed, analysts say. Blair wants Bush to commit to finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in the wake of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death and to taking a gentler approach to European allies like France and Germany, which opposed the Iraq war. [Page 3a]...

PARIS - Yasser Arafat's longtime personal physician called yesterday for an autopsy on the deceased Palestinian leader, saying he was baffled and angered by the French medical team's failure to diagnose Arafat's illness. Ashraf al Kurdi, who was a friend and doctor to Arafat for 25 years, also said he was "disappointed" in the care that French doctors gave Arafat. "They did not care even to phone me and ask for his medical history," he said in a phone interview from his Jordan home. "I am very disappointed in their care for him, and I cannot understand this lack of an explanation for his death.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinians embarked on a new, uncertain path yesterday with the swift, smooth swearing-in of new leadership after the death of Yasser Arafat. Rawi Fattouh, speaker of the Palestinian parliament, was sworn in as acting president of the Palestinian Authority, the government formerly led by Arafat, until elections are held within the next 60 days. Mahmoud Abbas, a former prime minister who advocated nonviolence, took Arafat's place as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.