Review press accounts from the summer of 2002: Neither ally nor neutral approved of Bush's act of ostracism and instead warned of disaster. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country then held the EU's rotating presidency, lectured that without dialogue with Arafat "Israel could not stop Palestinian violence through force." A circumspect Colin Powell visited the region often to smooth over hurt feelings and in the process to soften Bush's bold action. Dennis Ross, remember, had met with the American-subsidized Arafat almost 500 times, and it was said that the latter visited the Clinton White House more than any other foreign leader — a fact apparently lost on the Palestinian street, which still spontaneously cheered on news of September 11.
But if Arafat had spent his last years shuttling to the White House and meeting with high American officials eager to please him, do you really think that Arafat's successor would have done anything but continue along the path that Arafat blazed? Would we have seen the progress that has taken place since his death?
More than Arafat died. His death symbolized the death of his strategy of killing and walking away from peace time and time again, sure that another overnight stay in the White House and more money from the EU would be the reward for any Palestinian leader that killed and walked--and then talked.
