Yasser Arafat

HAMAS' VICTORY in the Palestinian elections last week is widely seen as discrediting President Bush's desire to spread democracy. Actually, the electoral triumph of this pro-terrorist, anti-Western movement offers more evidence for the failure of the cynical approach that the United States pursued before Bush came into office -- a pseudo-realistic policy of using supposedly benign dictators to repress Islamic extremists.

When the campaign for Palestinian parliamentary elections kicked off this month, it seemed only fitting that Fatah, the nationalist movement Yasser Arafat helped found nearly half a century ago, chose to hold its inaugural rally at his tomb. Fourteen months after Arafat's death, the iconic leader still casts a long shadow over Fatah's political fortunes.

MAHMOUD ABBAS is a different kind of Palestinian president. Unlike his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, who made a long-term strategy out of being a victim, Abbas has made it clear that he seeks to build a political culture of responsibility. He has repeatedly said (in both English and Arabic) that violence is counterproductive to Palestinian aspirations.

A stroke caused the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat last year, but French doctors were unable to determine the underlying cause of health problems that sent him into a rapid decline, according to a summary of the medical report. The inconclusive findings of the medical assessment, whose contents were first reported in detail Thursday by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the New York Times, may add to the intrigue surrounding Arafat's deterioration and death.

Unidentified gunmen in the Gaza Strip shot and killed Moussa Arafat, a former Palestinian Authority security chief and a cousin of the late Yasser Arafat, at his home in Gaza City before dawn today. The brazen assault heightened worries about chaos and factional violence in the Gaza Strip following Israel's withdrawal from all 21 Jewish settlements there. Israeli forces are expected to hand over the Gaza Strip in coming weeks, turning the impoverished enclave into a test of Palestinian rule.

The mountains of wrecked cars and rubble have been scooped up and hauled away. Gone, too, is the half-ruined wing of a building that served as a hide-out for Palestinian gunmen. In their place, a new governmental complex is taking shape.

In responding to Nancy Soderberg's Feb. 20 Opinion piece suggesting that Condoleezza Rice could receive the Nobel Peace Prize, letter writer Hans Grellmann (Feb. 23) states, "Warmongers don't get peace prizes." The godfather of modern terrorism, Yasser Arafat, received the peace prize in 1993. Gregory Givens Redondo Beach

Palestinian lawmakers ended days of rancorous debate Thursday and broke with the legacy of Yasser Arafat, giving their approval to a reformist Cabinet filled with technocrats and newcomers and nearly devoid of the late president's loyalists. The 24 ministers, nearly three-quarters of them freshmen and two of them women, were sworn in late Thursday and were to start work today as the Palestinian Authority's first post-Arafat government.

On Iraq, doves have looked pretty good the last few years as the rationales offered up by the hawks (myself included) have mostly fallen apart. But on Israel, which is now embarking on a promising peace initiative with the Palestinians, it's the other way around. In retrospect, the doves now look foolish and the hawks positively brilliant. Three years ago, if you recall, Israel faced near-daily suicide bombings.