I agree with Buck Galaxy that Arafat is a murdering bastard who has poorly served the Palestinians. However I also believe that until recently, most Palestinians thought Yasser was the only man to lead them. I also suspect if Yasser Arafat had tried to compromise with the Israelis in any way, he would have been assassinated like Anwar Sadat.

As a rule-of-thumb, people get the politicians they deserve. It makes sense for an external power to remove a foreign politician only when he's a threat to neighboring nations and there's no easy way to replace him with a non-threatening native. This was the root of our problem with the Iraqis.

Gary