It's strange how some things get remembered and some things get forgotten? For example back in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon they had a go at getting Arafat, and targetted an apartment block where they thought he was staying, and killed 200 people. But somehow that kind of thing has slipped out of most people's consciousness when they are trying to draw up the record on atrocities.

Here's a very interesting, and critical obituary of Yasser Arafat It emphasises how far from his original ambitions for his people he had been willing to go, in the view of the writer, David Hirst, to try to get some kind of Palestinian state, far furher than he had any kind of mandate to go. "A genuinely democratic leader" could well be far less able to surrender so much.