RAMALLAH, West Bank — Yasser Arafat, the guerrilla chieftain who juggled armed resistance and political diplomacy, left a dual impression on the world: the iconic symbol of the Palestinian struggle for statehood, and the embodiment of a revolutionary who could not make the transition to governance.
Revered and reviled, Arafat forced the plight of the Palestinian people into international consciousness and made it the defining conflict of the 20th century Middle East. He convinced even his enemies that Palestinians had the right to a state of their own, then failed tragically to deliver it.
Locked to the end in a showdown with Israel, Arafat saw many of his erstwhile supporters desert him as he appeared increasingly an anachronism, apparently unable to truly forswear violence or embrace the rule of law.
The only leader most Palestinians have ever known, Arafat came tantalizingly close to establishing the state he dedicated his life to winning, surviving myriad brushes with death along the way: wars, plane crashes and Israel's best efforts to put him in the grave.
For signing the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his Israeli partners, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, then made a triumphant entry into the Gaza Strip to become the elected head of the Palestinian Authority, ruling a territory made up of the strip and a patchwork area in the West Bank.
By the time Arafat died, however, he and the Palestinians had lost much of what they had gained, as Israel expanded Jewish settlements and re-occupied some lands amid a surge in Palestinian attacks.
Arafat was a decrepit shadow of the leader he once had been, shunned by a White House where he once had been an honored guest and trapped in the ruins of his Israeli-battered headquarters in the West Bank, his graft-ridden Palestinian Authority all but collapsed.
Throughout his life, he never gave up the olive-drab garb of his guerrilla days, the trademark 2-day-old whiskers and the black-and-white headdress, the kaffiyeh, folded in a triangle to represent a map of Palestine. All made the point that his battle for a full-fledged country was not finished.
"Give me a state," Arafat once said in an interview, "and I'll wear a tux and a bow tie."
