A Dreamer Who Forced His Cause Onto World Stage

For virtually his entire adult life, Yasser Arafat had one dream, and he pursued it with such energy and zeal — some would say fanaticism — that he came to personify the dream itself. The dream was of self-determination and statehood for the Palestinian people, and in the end he did not live to see it. Such was his devotion to the cause that Arafat, who died early today at age 75 in a military hospital outside Paris, was willing to tolerate and embrace bloody acts of terror that made him an international pariah, and also to sign a peace agreement with Israel that inspired the wrath of some of his closest advisers, who considered it a sellout. By dint of ruthless violence often directed at civilians, artful manipulation and the sheer theatrical force of his personality, he managed almost single-handedly to elevate the grievances of a few million disenfranchised Palestinians to a prominent place on the world’s political agenda. Full Story