Idealogian

Arafat's Obituaries

Reuters has a rundown of international response to Arafat's death. Some are sickeningly glamorous:

"President Arafat will always be remembered for having, in 1988, led the Palestinians to accept the principle of peaceful coexistence between Israel and a future Palestinian state. By signing the Oslo accords in 1993 he took a giant step towards the realisation of this vision."

-Spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan

Some are conspicuously neutral:

"With the death of President Yasser Aarafat [sic] the Palestinian people have lost their historical leader. An era has ended. ... Everything must be done now to achieve an orderly transfer of power. Of utmost importance is a leadership, made legitimate through early elections, which remains committed to a fair peace settlement."

-German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer

But only three nations (as excerpted here) make any mention of his "failures":

"Without Arafat there could have already been peace in the region and a Palestinian state."

-Israeli Justice Minister Yosef (Tommy) Lapid

"I think history will judge him very harshly for not having seized the opportunity in the year 2000 to embrace the offer that was very courageously made by the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, that involved the Israelis agreeing to about 90 percent of what the Palestinians wanted."

-Australian Prime Minister John Howard

"His failure was to not make the transformation from resistance leader to statesman. Under his leadership the Palestinian Authority was marked by incompetence, corruption and a lack of constitutional and democratic procedure."

-New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff

No mention (at least not in these excerpts) of his being a terrorist, and in a sense the father of all modern-day terrorists. The New York Times obituary, however, makes significant mention of that aspect.

Personally, I'm not sure whether to actually rejoice or not, but at the very least: good riddance. May he reap in his next life what he has sown in this one.