AL-BIREH, West Bank — The Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence is larger than the late President Yasser Arafat. The symbolism that Arafat embodied should not be underestimated. It is this symbolism that Palestinians are mourning.

The substance of Arafat's symbolism has to do with how it has represented Palestinian nationalism and the five-decade struggle for justice for a people dispossessed in 1948, militarily occupied in 1967, attacked while in exile in 1970 in Jordan and 1982 in Lebanon, and, most recently, battered in their own homes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

A spectrum of opinions about Arafat, the man and the leader, will surely outlive the international flurry of media interest in his death. However, the world must be aware that the Palestinian struggle is beyond any single individual.

During the past decade, Yasser Arafat brought to the table something that Israel and the United States could only previously dream about: the single legitimate source for Palestinian political decisions.

Through his iron-fisted and highly centralized control of Palestinian decisionmaking bodies, finances and fighters, Arafat was able to coax his people into dealing with a new reality: the Oslo Peace Process, which he hoped would open the door for good faith from Israel and the United States. Arafat hoped that this process would end in a political solution resulting in two independent states living side by side, Palestine and Israel.

History has proven that Israel and the United States had other plans — the creation of a process that would, in and of itself, become the means as well as the goal. It was a process that would serve as the final nail in the coffin of the Palestinians' legitimate demands that international and humanitarian law be applied to their case.

Israel and the United States made a major blunder. They ignored that the "peace" that they had made was a peace between leaders, not between peoples.

Thus, as the United States and Israel unsuccessfully sought to twist Arafat's arm in the Camp David II talks, of 2000, they began a concerted campaign to discredit Arafat and pin the blame of the breakdown of talks on a single person.

Arafat was truly the shrewder politician. He knew that for a peace among leaders to be transformed into a peace among peoples, the real issues of the conflict had to be justly addressed.

Refugees, settlements, Jerusalem and statehood were not negotiating cards but, rather, the essence of the entire effort.