Arafat a hero to some, a terrorist to others

A Jordanian helicopter containing an ill and frail Yasser Arafat lifted off from the soil of Ramallah last week. Even those who opposed and fought against him felt a vague surge of respect at this significant moment. Arafat, disengaged from Palestine, the principal source of his life force.

He battled for decades for this land. He turned its story into a political reality that has preoccupied the world, and he became a powerful and universal symbol of a nation's return to its homeland. Who is this man? A hero to most Palestinians and a terrorist to most Israelis, a man of artifices and enigmas. Even his closest associates admit that they don't understand him and sometimes have difficulty deciphering his behavior. Arafat has declared that he is "married to Palestine." He has devoted his life to it, eschewed for it the pleasures of the world (although, according to Israeli intelligence, that didn't stop him from transferring millions of dollars belonging to the Palestinian Authority to his private Swiss bank account).

He is a man of one idea — the establishment of an independent Palestinian state — and all means were acceptable in seeking that goal. He committed murder with his own hands (in the war of 1948 he was said to have killed a Palestinian he suspected, mistakenly, of treason). He led freedom fighters in a campaign against the Israeli occupation, but also sent terrorists on operations against innocent civilians. With the agility of a trapeze artist he leaped, sometimes with genius, among politicians and countries. Without blinking an eye, he violated agreements he had signed and led his people to great achievements.

To a certain extent he even created and molded the Palestinians as a nation, while at the same time inflicting on them tragedies and serious errors. In the end he sent them plummeting into their current mortal condition.

Arafat arouses mixed feelings among Westerners. Many respect his fortitude and his determination but feel an aversion to his behavior, his capriciousness, his extremism.

The Palestinians have viewed him differently. For example, there was the time he stood on a stage in Cairo in 1994 to sign one of the agreements that failed. Israeli, Arab and Western leaders were there, dressed in fine suits, radiating confidence and even a bit of arrogance. Arafat stood out with his slipshod appearance, his strange gestures, even his physical abjectness. But the Palestinians loved him precisely for that. Because there, among the world's great men, those who have everything — countries, armies, money — he was the destitute refugee, the wily tramp, doing tricks with the one coin he had in order to achieve for his people what was, for him, an existential need.