symbolized the Palestinian people and almost single-handedly guaranteed that their
struggle for national identity remained high on the international agenda for four
decades. Arafat was able to bring his people close to nationhood, but he never made
it. He died of unexplained causes in November 2004.
In the last decade of Arafat’s life, the Palestinians experienced both the euphoria of
peace and the tragedy of violence and accompanying economic stagnation. From 1993
to 1995, Arafat negotiated a series of agreements with Israel that offered Palestinians
their first taste of self-governance, albeit with heavy dependence on Israel. For the rest
of the 1990s, Arafat presided over the Palestinian Authority, a quasi-government whose
writ covered only parts of the Gaza Strip and the major cities of the West Bank. Dur-
ing 2000, PLO and Israeli leaders, with U.S. mediation, worked toward a final peace,
but the two sides ultimately failed to reach an agreement. In the wake of that diplo-
matic failure—with Palestinians having experienced no real improvement in their daily
lives and with Israel continuing to expand settlements in the occupied territories—Pales-
tinians rebelled in late September, marking the start of the al-Aqsa intifada. The situ-
ation quickly spun out of control, settling into a cycle of Palestinian attacks on Israelis
and Israeli military suppression of the Palestinians. By the time Arafat died, he had been
confined for more than two years by Israel to the ruins of the Palestinian Authority’s
once-sparkling compound in Ramallah, and Arafat’s dream of a Palestinian state seemed
as distant from reality as ever (Oslo Accords, p. 213; Hebron Protocol, p. 259; Wye
River Memorandum, p. 267; Camp David and the al-Aqsa Intifada, p. 276; The
Mitchell Report, p. 287).
With Arafat gone, leaders of his power base, the Fatah faction and the PLO, turned
to his most logical successor: Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen). Abbas
had been an aide to Arafat for nearly forty years and had served briefly in 2003 as the
Palestinians’ first prime minister. A man who had shunned the limelight as much as
Arafat sought it, Abbas was little-known to Palestinians, and as a consequence, had no
personal base of public support. He served as acting president of the Palestinian
Authority for about six weeks, until elections on January 9, 2005. A host of minor
candidates entered the race to succeed Arafat, but aside from Abbas only one—Mustafa
Barghouti—had any name recognition. Barghouti, a medical doctor, actively cam-
paigned for reform of the corruption-riddled Palestinian Authority. Barghouti was a
distant relative, but not a political ally, of Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the so-
called young guard of Fatah and probably the one man who could have seriously chal-
lenged Abbas. Marwan Barghouti, however, was serving five life terms in an Israeli
prison for his alleged role in planning the murders of five Israelis. Despite his impris-
onment, for a time he considered running for the presidency. Abbas won the election
with 62.3 percent of the vote, giving him a dose of political support.
In the context of Arafat’s death and the ongoing violence between Israelis and
Palestinians during the al-Aqsa intifada, the inauguration of Abbas on January 15 gave
hope to many for the resumption of the quest for peace. Abbas asserted that he wanted
to seize the opportunity, saying his first priority would be to “calm” the violence. “Our
hand is extended toward an Israeli partner for making peace,” he said in his inaugu-
ral speech to the Palestinian Legislative Council. Two days later, Abbas stationed sev-
eral hundred Palestinian security personnel along the border between the Gaza Strip
and Israel, with orders to prevent the launching of mortars and rockets against nearby
Israeli towns.
306 ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS