Year after year, lie after lie, bloodstain after bloodstain, Arafat sends others to kill and to die, but endures imperturbably at the centre of his web.

Arafat's career in slaughter started in the late 1940s, when he smuggled guns into Palestine for use against Jews and the British. Very little has changed since then. He still misleads and impoverishes his people, spewing his steady stream of hate into a region that has no shortage of that corrosive emotion.

Maybe now, after all these yaers, there's some hope that Arafat can be toppled. Finally, protests in the streets of Gaza are aimed not at the Great Satan America nor at Israel, but at Arafat himself. Successive Palestinians prime ministers have all but given up on trying to work with him. The frustration, the fear, and the anger Arafat has brought upon his people in order to perpetuate his own grasp on power have now, it seems, turned against him.

As long as Arafat is in power, there's nobody with whom the Israelis can negotiate peace. Arafat wants no peace until the last Jew is gone. Any chance for something like peace in the Middle East will come only in the post-Arafat era.