What he represented was the reason he was removed: that Palestinians are one people, whether living under military occupation or in refugee camps. They have a right to self-determination, and they have fought hard for their liberty for generations, which is also a right. For a people to negotiate their way out of an occupation by diplomatic means alone, when the occupier is determined to hold on to their land, has no successful precedent.
On the other hand, examples of successful negotiations once the occupier has accepted he must relinquish another's country are legion. Arafat's own much-used example was French president Charles De Gaulle's 1958 call for la paix des braves with the Algerian armed liberation movement, the FLN. Arafat represented an important reality -- peace will come when freedom is achieved for the Palestinians, and not one minute before.
The negative myth of Arafat prevents any understanding of the conflict or how to resolve it. This is not a conflict healed by providing economic recovery to Palestinians, since their impoverishment is entirely due to an entrenched and permanent military occupation. It is not a holy war against Palestinian terrorists who seek the destruction of the Israeli state, nor excited speculation on the role a new Israeli Labour party leader might play.
This is a battle over the right to call this conflict a conflict between two peoples: one that is oppressed, and the other that is denying them their right to be free. Recovering the true myth of the old man is the key to understanding who the Palestinians are, and how they will achieve their freedom.
Karma Nabulsi is a fellow at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and a former Palestine Liberation Organization representative.
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