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Geo-Political Notes: Arafat’s
Departure by Scott B. MacDonald For
a region already filled with political upheaval, the news
that the 75-year old Yasser Arafat is dead does not bode
well. This is not to say that the long-time Palestinian leader
was a man of peace. Rather, the risk is that his legacy is
one of chaos and civil war among the Palestinians, which
has implications well beyond the confines of the Gaza Strip
and West Bank. Arafat is the last of the Nasserites, who
came to age in the aftermath of European dominance. Like
Egypt’s Nasser, Syria’s Assad and Algeria’s
FLN leadership, Arafat’s orientation was Arab nationalism,
socialist economics and alignment with the Soviet Union during
the Cold War. It is important to emphasize that this placed
him in the secular camp, not the radical Islamic camp. Although
he mouthed the Islamic rhetoric, his closest allies are secular
and, perhaps most telling, his wife is Christian (though
officially she converted to Islam but has lived in Paris
with the couple’s daughter for the past three years).
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