Grolm37,
I'll be the first to admit that Arafat had many faults, and I of all people think him to have outserved his purpose years ago.
However...the fact of the matter is that Arafat is the one man that put the Palestinian issue on the map. He singlehandedly made the world look up and do something....Palestine went from a refugee issue to a political world stage issue.
Back in 1969...when Arafat was made leader of the executive council of the PLO (this is before Arafat was in the picture)....Golda Meir (she was the Israeli Prime Minister in case you didn't know), got up on the world stage, in the UN security council, and with the straight face told the world that the Palestinian people didn't exist.
She said...with a straight face that there were no Palestinian people. Many zionists even today agree with her (just read some of MillerCHF and BananaBenders posts).
This was before Arafat was in the picture. So what makes you think that Arafats death will open the door for peace??
israel don't want peace. They want the total surrender and destruction of the Palestinian people. It is for this reason that they hate Arafat so much. He was always a thorn in there side.
Israel don't want peace. What they want is the whole of the west bank, whilst the remainder of the Palestinians live in a prison which is Gaza strip, where Israel control all borders and air space.
After 1993, when the Oslo Peace accords were signed...within the next 5 years, the Israeli's built over 500 settlements in the Westbank alone (gush-shalom.com).
Now is the act of a nation that wants peace.
pfft!.