In recent years Yassir Arafat has most commonly been described as the Symbol of the Palestinian People. That may in fact be the one thing most Palestinians, most Israelis, and most others agree on. What they don't agree on, and may never have agreed on, is what his symbolhood stood for. For most Israelis in most times Arafat was a symbol of an implacable Palestine that would always be the sworn enemy of Israel. For most Palestinians in most times, Arafat was the symbol of resistance against Israel and the stubborn search for justice. The exception was the period when Arafat moved entered into the Oslo Peace Process, revealing himself to be a pliable and fallible politician with more hope than cunning. Unfortunately, the Israeli leaders who faced off with Arafat from 1993-2000 were men of great cunning and little hope. They expected Arafat to sell the Palestinians on a deal that evolved from vague to cynical, and when he couldn't deliver, the slandered him, then attempted to bury him alive. Arafat's defense, in turn, was to revert to being the Symbol of the Palestinians, a people who knew all too well his suffering.

As the pundits look back on Arafat's career, you will hear much about his failings, especially two myths: that he rejected Barak's generous final status proposal, and that he responded by launching the violence of the second ("Al-Aqsa") intifada. He did neither. With Barak he always wanted to negotiate further, but Barak issued his take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum, then pulled his offers and threw his election to Sharon. The intifada started with demonstrations against Sharon's provocative march to the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), which were met with violent repression by Shaul Moffaz's Israeli armed forces, although the Barak's political message in breaking off the Peace Process and Sharon's subsequent election was what really convinced so many Palestinians that the only thing Israel respects is violence. This is not to say that Arafat did no wrong as these events developed. He didn't commit these acts, but his errors of omission let them get out of hand, and let Barak, Sharon, and their allies (including Bill Clinton) put the blame on him. And his symbolhood let him accept the blame, because he understood that it was the will of the Palestinian people to reject Barak and to challenge Sharon and Moffaz. The one thing that Israel couldn't, and wouldn't, deny was that he was the Symbol.

Arafat's errors of omission may reflect some deficiencies in his skillset, but they mostly derive from the intrinsic weakness of his people. The real reason there is no peace in Palestine is that the people in power, the Israelis, don't want peace. If they did, they would have made Arafat look like a genius, but instead they made him look like a chump. Arafat himself didn't have much choice there. He took a leap of faith in signing Oslo, but then he had been maneuvered into a dead end and had no leverage to get a better deal. Once he returned, he was obligated to do Israel's dirty work in the Occupied Territories, and Israel had complete control of his purse strings, his borders, everything short of his dreams. Had Israel cut him a fair and just deal, he might have made a go of it, but Israel fulfilled few of the meager promises made, while its noisy and vengeful democracy demanded more and more -- more security, more settlements, everything. Arafat was wedged between Israel's escalating demands and the frustration of his own people and their simmering belief that Israel's peace process would come to naught, that they would be left with less than ever and no recourse except violence. Given this squeeze, Arafat did what any two-bit politician would do: he greased a few palms, and bided his time. The net effect was that nobody trusted him. The problem was not that he had no principles; the problem was that he didn't know how to put them into practice.

Arafat was remarkably successful at controlling the dialogues within the Palestinian political community, but he was an abject failure at determining how the rest of the world would view the Palestinians and their cause. The latter would have been a very tall order even if he had complete autonomy: for starters, he was up against Israel's propaganda machine, and he would have had to overcome some deep prejudices held by many (perhaps most) Americans. But he didn't have complete autonomy: internal political rhetoric tends to favor the most militant -- there are many examples of this, most relevantly in Israel and the United States -- so he could never afford to be seen by his own people as weak. Plus he had another disadvantage in that his political base was the Palestinian refugees (the war of 1948), not the Occupied Territories (the war of 1967), even though from 1993 on he officially represented only the latter. This is important because Israel is somewhat flexible on 1967 but not at all flexible on 1948: many (perhaps most) Israelis would willingly cede the Occupied Territories for demonstrable assurances of peace, but virtually no Israelis would support the return of the 1948 refugees. One big problem that Arafat had was that he was never able to distinguish the deal he could make from the deal he couldn't.

Arafat's great failure is that he was unable to achieve justice for his people without the threat of violence. But that is not just Arafat's failure: it is the failure of mankind in the 20th century -- and what we've seen of the 21st century thus far doesn't look any better. But perhaps that is too much to have asked. When Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he stood up with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, whose credentials as warriors match or exceed Arafat's. Peres spent much of his career building the IDF, especially its atom bomb program. Rabin was the field commander who emptied Ramleh and Lydda of Palestinians, rounding them up and trucking them to Jordan's lines in 1948. And Rabin was Chief of Staff during the 1967 war, when Israel conquered Gaza and the West Bank. And Rabin was Minister of Defense during the first intifada, when he famously urged Israeli troops to "break the bones" of Palestinian children throwing rocks. Oslo was a "peace of warriors": the reason it failed had nothing to do with the moral perfidy of the principals. It was because Arafat was too weak to keep the Israelis honest -- too weak even to keep his own side honest. And because the Israelis still believe that it is their might that makes anything they want to do right.

Arafat's death solves nothing, but it puts his symbolhood to rest. (Or should. I understand now that he will be buried in his prison in Ramallah.) The Palestinians now have a fresh chance to make their case to the world, without having it corrupted by all the baggage Arafat picked up over the years. But nothing that the Palestinians can do by themselves will work -- not violence and not nonviolence -- until the people of Israel have a change of heart. Arafat's death removes the illusion that he was the problem; but it is left to Israel to do what they should have done all along, which is to open their eyes and make right what they have done.