Arafat. Leading article

The scenes of chaos which surrounded the burial of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah recalled that, in spite of its many failures, the Palestinian raïs remained a myth, for its people and in the Arab world ­ without equivalent perhaps since the Nasser Egyptian. It had on the other Arab leaders, who tolerated it fault of being able to get rid some, the advantage never of having had to control. It could, until the end, to camp in the ruins of Mouqataa its character of irreducible combatant, defying a much higher enemy in forces, and of martyr.

This myth could make forget, at least partly, the successive defeats of the Arabs, and their frustration to be able to reach a minimum of prosperity and modernity. The end of Arafat was however not accomodated like the end of the world. Perhaps proverbial (and the quite as mythical)"Arab street" starts to weary misleading myths and leaders charismatic, and to aspire to a little more wellbeing, of democracy and peace.

The heirs to Arafat who, them, are not myths, will have to raise of the challenges which one can consider insurmountable. Initially, to elect a new president and to give on foot what remains Palestinian Authority, by preventing that the competitions, personal and political, do not make rock the embryo of State in chaos, for the only profit of the armed groups extremists, and of Israel.

George W Bush promises to help them to give birth to the State that it promised to them from here at 2009. The first condition so that this promise once more does not remain dead letter is to push Sharon to withdraw its troops of the Palestinian territories, to put an end to colonization and to take again the way of the "passenger waybill", whose term is a Palestinian State close to Israel. Because the Palestinians will not be able to advance towards the democracy and the end of violence as long as Israel will not have engaged resolutely on the way of the inescapable compromise.