MIDDLE EAST, COMMENTARY: What Arafat’s Passing Brought to the Middle East

By Peter Cui

Yasser Arafat was a symbol of his people's struggle for liberation. Now he is gone. What will his passing away bring to his people, his enemy, and the peace movement? To the Palestinians, they lost their leader, a leader who was almost like their father, who was, to a large extent, spiritually leading them to liberation and statehood. Now that their leader, their direction-star, has passed away, I haven't seen that they are near panic, but no doubt they feel lost. They are wondering where they are going, what they should do.

It’s true that there will be a new leader, but he or she can hardly be a star; for at least some years, there won't be a new star lighting up in Palestine. The people depended on Arafat for so long, and the whole authority had been a one-man operation for so long, it won't be easy for them to forget him.

To Israel, on the one hand, they are happy to see the death of Arafat as they’ve been longing to eliminate him for years. On the other hand, how they face Palestine without Arafat is a completely new circumstance to them. They now have no excuse to continue refusing to reopen the peace talks by saying that "we don't talk with Arafat, that distrustful man."

The death of Arafat has offered a chance to break the present deadlock in the Middle East peace movement. Doubtlessly this chance will bring changes, including good ones like reopening the peace talks and bad ones like panic, anarchy or even civil war.

Above all, I'd say that Arafat's death brings the Middle East an opportunity, a good one, to make a difference in the deadly status quo. However, as for what kind of difference, no one knows.