Yasir Arafat had a remarkable career. In all of modern history, no terrorist had such good press or was so internationally honored as he was at his funeral. But the story of Arafat is far from over. Of course, the most compelling question is whether his legacy will continue to shape Palestinian politics and wreck the hopes for peace. But beyond that, Arafat's legacy affects the entire world. In a very real sense, he was the godfather of the radical movements born in the Middle East that have ushered in a new era of global terrorism.

Arafat's brilliance at public relations allowed him to reinvent himself periodically, to avoid responsibility for his defeats, intransigence and terrorism. As early as the 1970s, American officials called him the "teflon terrorist." Arafat exploited others' wishful thinking that peace could be obtained easily if only they gave him concessions--or their vanity that they might be the one to solve the great Middle East problem if only they were nice to him. He showed how easy it was to fool the well-intentioned West and how quickly it forgot what he did last time. Arafat was able to give himself the image of being politically progressive, which allowed him to intimidate his own people, ignore their poverty, perpetuate outrageous conspiracy theories and foster corruption without any of it being counted against him by the Western Left. Public opinion polls showed that at the time of his death, Arafat was more popular in France than he was among Palestinians.

Until the end, the many who praised Arafat--far more numerous in the West than in the Arab world, in itself a point of great significance--found him admirable mainly on the basis of three qualities. He was said to be a nationalist who was leading and representing his own people; to be beloved by them as the symbol of their struggle and as a personally courageous individual; and to be a champion of the underdog. Each of these arguments is easily challengeable. Indeed, without thoroughly investigating and questioning them, it is impossible to assess Arafat's record.

Arafat was never a true nationalist--if we define a nationalist as one whose priority is obtaining an independent state. By the end of the 1970s, he had already created a movement that the world was ready to acknowledge. He could have obtained a state in the context of the Egypt-Israel peace deal at Camp David, and on several occasions thereafter, had he moderated his goals and tactics.

In 1993, by signing the Oslo agreement, he persuaded many that he was ready for a compromise peace. And he returned to his homeland to become the head of a Palestinian Authority (PA) that seemed poised to achieve a state. Yet as ruler over two million Palestinians, he did nothing to raise their standards of living or contribute to their well-being. In 2000 he rejected, at Camp David and in the Clinton plan, two chances to obtain a state and end the Israeli occupation. Instead, Arafat returned to war, still believing that violence would achieve his goals. The result has been four years of bloodshed and the pointless deaths of several thousand people.

Arafat's entire career was always dedicated to opposition to the very existence of the state of Israel--even at the cost of obtaining an independent Palestinian state. And Arafat's embrace of terrorism was not an accident but essential to his strategy. Arafat believed that by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians he would bring about Israel's collapse. To his dying day, he never lost belief in the efficacy of this method. He also believed that who he was fighting would make him more popular--at least in the Arab and Muslim world--and acceptable. Certainly, while Arafat tried to avoid direct anti-Semitism, he did so by the simple method of transferring all the traditional anti-Semitic feelings and stereotypes to Israelis. Fighting in a land with which the world was obsessed guaranteed him international attention. Murdering what might be called the world's most despised people ensured a sympathy that would otherwise not have been forthcoming.

As a means for destroying Israel, this strategy failed. But Arafat's embrace of terrorism had other advantages. It grabbed headlines, making the rest of the world feel frightened and creating a false urgency for the Palestinian cause. Arafat made the Palestinian issue a central global concern and thus developed a new mode of politics which seemed successful enough to encourage imitators through a combination of terrorism, propaganda, courting sympathy, threatening to unleash the wrath of the Arab and Muslim worlds, and ensuring that the conflict would not go away.

It also allowed Arafat to claim a seat at the table as a major force in the Middle East. As a "revolutionary" leader, Arafat always claimed that he could control the policy of Arab states and the opinion of the Arab population--persuading others that those who crossed him would face their wrath and those who pleased him enjoy their largesse. The power of oil money and the growth of Islamic-oriented politics seemed to reinforce that claim. This gave him an advantage in dealing with Western governing elites who thought in terms of economic advantage and realpolitik.

To a large extent, he was bluffing. Arab rulers held him in low regard. They did not consult him on their actions or heed his threats. When it suited their interests, they cut off his money and killed his men. But in a sense, Arafat's claim was partly true. He received backing from Arab states not because they feared his power to win over their own people but because it was in their own interests to do so. The Palestinian issue was highly beneficial for the regimes because they could convince their people that all their social, political and economic problems were caused by Israel. It has been the great excuse of Arab politics. The conflict's continuation was used to explain why the Arab world lacked democracy and failed to progress economically and socially. Today, Arab rulers continue to insist that reform is a trick by the hostile West and democracy an unaffordable luxury in a time of war.

Arafat also had an influence far beyond his region. He paved the way for other extremist movements to be legitimized as freedom fighters battling against imperialism and colonialism.

First, he demonstrated that terrorism can be a very effective tool for mobilizing people who are willing to overlook the moral issues and rejoice in the deaths of other ethnic groups. It is true that terrorism had been used throughout history, but this tactic had been decisively--if not always consistently--rejected by communism, the dominant revolutionary movement for most of the 20th century. Arafat introduced it as a populist revolutionary tool for building a movement. He proved how politically profitable a terrorist strategy could be, thus encouraging imitators.

Second, Arafat showed that terrorism could be carried out with little political cost. Though Western politicians have warned of the terrible punishment awaiting terrorists, few of those under Arafat's command with blood on their hands have ever been imprisoned, and many were sprung from jail by further attacks, hostage-taking or political deals. Arafat proved that being a terrorist was much less risky than it seemed, again inspiring imitators. Indeed, Arafat's self-styled revolutionary persona and underdog appeal gave him cachet with his leftist sympathizers in the West, which he and later totalitarian movements would use repeatedly to great effect. It was this support that allowed Arafat to demand concessions from his adversaries and reject good-faith offers despite his own position of weakness.

Finally, Arafat helped make anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism respectable again. By constantly portraying Israel--and more subtly, Jews--as evil, Arafat returned this stereotype to international acceptance, reversing the impact of Nazism's defeat and the horror at the Holocaust. It is especially noteworthy that the peak of anti-Semitism since the death of Hitler happened after Israel offered to give Arafat just about everything he claimed to want, making his achievement all the more impressive. Equally, he played a large role in spreading anti-Americanism globally. While it is easy to attribute Arafat's hostility toward the United States to its support for Israel, it was actually part of his revolutionary ideology from the beginning, going back to the early 1960s, long before U.S. aid to Israel had begun. Again, the true blossoming of this hatred came only after President Bill Clinton tried so strenuously to produce a political solution that met Palestinian needs and interests.

But by the end of his career, Arafat's luck had begun to run out. While many in Europe and elsewhere continued to be swayed by Arafat's unique skill in public relations and his revolutionary image, he was increasingly being seen as part of the problem, not the solution. The events of September 11, 2001, brought home graphically to America--and to some extent the West in general--that terrorism was not merely a matter of taste, definition or the sincerity with which one pursued a cause. Both Israel and the United States refused to talk with Arafat, being disillusioned by their dealings with him and by his refusal to implement promises. Even in Europe and the Arab world, criticisms of Arafat reached an all-time high. Among Palestinians, too, his popularity reached a low point, though they agreed there was no alternative leader.

Arafat's death has forced the Palestinians to seek a new leader, but his legacy--constantly reaffirmed by most of his colleagues and successors--continues to shape the movement in several critical respects. First, the movement remains focused on the destruction of Israel and the incorporation of its territory into a Palestinian Arab state. Ironically, the movement has jettisoned real nationalism in exchange for the promise of revenge and total victory. It never speaks of a realizable Palestinian state that would gather in refugees and be economically and culturally prosperous, but rather of a "return" intended to recreate a mythical pre-1948 Palestine.

Second, its tactics remain focused on a glorified anti-civilian terrorism that at most might be temporarily abandoned if it appears to be too politically costly. This approach is justified not only by hatred and a total disbelief in the other side's readiness to make real peace, but more deeply by the assumption that such violence will cause Israel to collapse or surrender.

Third, its political culture revolves around the glorification of armed struggle, the legitimacy of terrorism, the deification of total victory and the definition of moderation as treason. This view is spread through schools, mosques and the media. Defeats are perceived as victories, the extent of international support and Israel's weakness are overestimated, and thousands of dead Palestinians are glorified as martyrs, inspiring further struggle. This tendency to misstate actual conditions and ignore the balance of forces continues to block any moderate, pragmatic reorientation. And rather than decline, such ideas have now been passed to a new generation. This process is going to be very difficult to reverse.

Finally, there is the structural problem. The Palestinian movement remains a mishmash of rival leaders, institutions and organizations; nationalist and Islamist groups; and divisions between Palestinians inside and outside the West Bank and Gaza. There is no working chain of command nor any meaningful political Left, Right or Center. In fact, no consideration at all is given to economic organization, social policy or any of the other issues that shape political debate elsewhere.

IT IS easy for outside observers to ignore all these factors and simply assume that everything is different in the post-Arafat era and that the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), is going to adopt a pragmatic policy. But there will be no serious progress toward peace until there is a leadership strong and moderate enough to make and implement the tough decisions necessary to achieve a negotiated solution. The battle for power among the Palestinians is just beginning, and Abu Mazen is very far from exercising any real control. Thus, a quick advance to a comprehensive peace agreement in the near future is extremely unlikely.

Certainly, there are some leaders, including Abu Mazen himself, who genuinely understand the mess into which Arafat led the Palestinians. Unfortunately, there are even more activists and leaders who want the struggle to go on until Israel is destroyed, or at least forced to make concessions so massive as to lead ultimately to the same outcome. Still others are opportunists and careerists who will go along with an extremely radical consensus to gain or retain power for themselves. Even for those who understand the need for moderation, the political--and even personal--risks are so high as to discourage them from going very far in implementing such a policy. Among the main indicators of this reality is the view--held by Abu Mazen, too--that a "right of return" for all Palestinian refugees to live in Israel is a non-negotiable demand, not a negotiating chip.

Thus, they are only ready to accept a negotiated solution that keeps the door open for total victory. Such a stance requires terms neither Israel nor the United States will accept, and it ensures that any apparent diplomatic solution merely sets the stage for a new period of instability. It is this stance--not the details of a Palestinian state's borders or the exact arrangements for Jerusalem--that blocks the success of diplomatic efforts. Similarly, an unwillingness or inability to stop the violence prevents progress in the near term. In other words, the kind of program required as a minimal basis to achieve peace with Israel is basically defined as treason, a charge which the many rivals for leadership will not hesitate to fling at anyone deemed excessively moderate. Militants can argue, but moderates cannot, that they are fulfilling Arafat's legacy.

Nobody else will solve these problems for them. History has shown that when Israel has a government ready to make major concessions (as was the case in 1992-96, 1999-2000 and even to a large extent today), this is insufficient for a breakthrough. The same applies to U.S. involvement. The United States cannot deliver the kind of solution the Palestinian leadership demands. Indeed, the greatest outbreak of anti-American ideas and deeds in the Arab and Muslim world came after the United States raised billions of dollars in aid and provided massive political assistance to the Palestinians, endorsed a state for them, and tried to implement this outcome. As long as the current Palestinian leadership and ideology prevails, America cannot impose a peace, no matter how hard it tries.

For the Palestinian movement itself, weakness and failure are guaranteed by internal divisions and the inability to make vital decisions, on the one hand, and the lack of moderate goals or a viable strategy, on the other. As strange as it may seem to observers, it is nonetheless true that most Palestinian leaders want the occupation to continue more than Israelis do. For it is this that justifies their continued struggle to win everything, gains them international support, and lets them avoid making the kind of tough decisions that could split the movement or even result in their own demise.

These are the Herculean tasks that Abu Mazen must now confront, and his is also a job for which he has no proven skills and little support within the movement. He either cannot mobilize the masses against the radicals or does not know where to begin. He dares not use force against extremists, even to stop them from sabotaging any ceasefire he negotiates. Abu Mazen may want a peaceful solution, but he knows that compromise is political suicide. Yet without compromise, progress is impossible.

To understand better his dilemma, it is necessary to examine the factions within Fatah, the organization that is essentially the movement's ruling--albeit totally undisciplined--party. Fatah's establishment, of which Abu Mazen is a part, is the traditional leadership, who mostly come from places that became part of Israel in 1948 and who spent years of exile abroad. The great majority of them see no reason to change their view that the conflict is about Israel's destruction and replacement by a Palestinian state, not the creation of a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel. They will accept no compromise solution that would foreclose that ultimate objective. They demand a total return of refugees to ensure Israel's destruction from within. And they hold anti-American ideas that make them deeply distrustful of U.S. offers to help them achieve a state.

Their best-known leader is Faruq Qaddumi, the new head of Fatah, who is far more personally popular in the organization than Abu Mazen. He refuses to acknowledge Israel's right to exist, and he condemned the Oslo accords. In a November 29, 2004 interview, he explained that any two-state solution will only be a prelude to Israel's destruction and replacement by a Palestinian Arab state. The powerful Fatah Revolutionary Committee is led by a similar figure, Sakr Habash, who in 2000 authored a major Fatah paper explaining in detail why the Palestinian movement would never make real peace with Israel. Still another key institution, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), is led by Salim al-Zanun, who insists that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) never changed its charter calling for Israel's destruction.

Despite these hard-line views, this faction has good reasons for letting the relatively moderate Abu Mazen become the most prominent Palestinian leader. First, Abu Mazen is one of them, a man who can be trusted to support their interests against the younger generation and the Islamists. Second, by presenting a moderate face to the world, he is more likely to gain Western support than would an openly hard-line leader. Third, they are confident of being able to prevent him from making any meaningful concessions to Israel or the United States. Fourth, given the 69 year-old Abu Mazen's age and lack of charisma or mass support base, they do not have to worry about him challenging their power or punishing them for opposing his preferred policy.

In comparison, Abu Mazen has few dedicated moderate supporters. Prime Minister Abu Ala, a career PLO bureaucrat and the most enthusiastic among Palestinian leaders for the Oslo process, is also timid and, at 67, has had health problems. He also feuds with Abu Mazen. Muhammad Dahlan, 43, the only moderate with control over armed men, could be among the top leaders, or even be leader himself, when the next generation finally takes power. Once Arafat's protégé, he fell out with Arafat while leader of the Preventive Security Force in Gaza. He has been bold in challenging the Fatah mainstream. Yet he also has numerous enemies and probably could not take over even Gaza, where he would be opposed not only by Fatah hardliners but Hamas as well.

Members of the other major Fatah faction, the young insurgents, have a worldview similar to that of the establishment but are even more supportive of continued violence. Their leader, Marwan Barghouti, currently serving a life sentence in an Israeli jail for terrorist activities, heads the terrorist Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the grassroots Fatah group, Tanzim. The young insurgents view their elders with contempt for having failed to achieve victory and instead becoming corrupt bureaucrats. Although they were once severe critics of Arafat, their great enemy during the 1990s, they now opportunistically claim to be his true heirs. The Al-Aqsa Brigades have even incorporated Arafat's name into their own.

This faction's activists are great believers in the virtue of armed struggle. They argue that only violence will bring an imposed settlement on their own terms and force Israel to surrender the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem without getting much in return. They are ready to fight on for decades, picking up where Arafat left off. Abu Mazen wants to buy them off, but they intend to impose their strategy on him. Even if they do not try to oust him, they certainly mean to succeed him in power. When, for example, Abu Mazen campaigned in Jenin at a meeting of 2,000 people in a school auditorium on December 30, 2004, twenty Al-Aqsa Brigade gunmen took over the stage and fired dozens of rounds into the air to remind him of their power. At the moment he was being inaugurated in January, the group launched an attack on a Israel-Gaza border installation, killing six Israelis and disrupting negotiations between Israel and Abu Mazen.

From an institutional standpoint, the Palestinian movement is also going to be very difficult for Abu Mazen to control. He heads the PLO, but this is a paper organization with little influence and even less control over Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. In fact, it is these refugees who are the main lobby for a hard-line stance centering on a "right of return" to subvert Israel's existence. In Lebanon especially, they are also under the influence of such radical forces as Iran, Syria and the terrorist group Hizballah.

As for the other organization Abu Mazen heads, the PA, which nominally rules the West Bank and Gaza, it is merely a collection of bureaucracies, not a real power base. Fatah, controlled by the hard-line traditional establishment, remains the real locus of power.

The most important part of the PA, over which Abu Mazen will exercise little control, are the dozen armed security agencies, each divided between separate West Bank and Gaza commands. They are competing groups whose officers are virtual local warlords, collecting bribes and exercising arbitrary power over Palestinian citizens. Their commanders are likely to follow Abu Mazen's orders only when they feel like it.

Finally, there are the Islamist forces--Hamas and Islamic Jihad--and small, radical, pseudo-leftist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, eager to continue the violence and stage large-scale terrorist attacks to subvert any peace effort. Hamas has a support base of 15 to 20 percent of the Palestinian public. In the first round of local elections, it won control over one-third of the councils. Whatever power Abu Mazen or other leaders offer to the Islamists will not convince them to acquiesce. On the contrary, they will do everything possible to subvert a diplomatic solution and will dare Abu Mazen to suppress them with violence.

It is important to remember that to this day, most ordinary Palestinians have no idea what was offered at Camp David or that, in the December 2000 Clinton Plan, the United States and Israel proposed a comprehensive negotiated solution including an independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza, the equivalent of all of the West Bank, most of East Jerusalem, and sovereignty over the Al-Aqsa mosque. Misinformed that Israel poisoned Arafat and told that it is a state with no right to exist and that it is offering them no solution except endless occupation, Palestinians will understandably see continued armed struggle as their only alternative. Told repeatedly both that total victory is just and that the whole world supports them, they are unlikely to opt for a comprehensive moderate rethinking of their worldview.

Thus, there is a wide gap between the prevalent Western image--a Palestinian movement ready for peace with Abu Mazen firmly in control--and the reality. This must be bridged if there is to be any hope for peace. The kind of dramatic gestures and difficult decisions required are unlikely. Abu Mazen knows that compromises or concessions, the end of anti-Israel hate propaganda, or a fully imposed ceasefire will mean that he will be branded a traitor by rivals while not even being backed by his own Fatah movement.

The obvious temptation for Abu Mazen is to preserve his rule and Palestinian unity at the price of giving up any major progress. This strategy is the best way to lower the political heat among Palestinians, avoiding the divisive debate over reassessing the movement's goals and methods that making peace would require. Going too far toward real moderation would alienate his backers in the Fatah establishment and would certainly bring him into confrontation with the young insurgents and Islamists. For Abu Mazen, building a false moderate image abroad while assuring Palestinians that he is sufficiently militant seems a more attractive option. At the same time, though, he knows that unless he successfully takes up this challenge to bring real--and risky--change, Palestinians will be condemned to additional decades of suffering and failure.

A period of turmoil, which could be quite extended, will be needed for a new leader with real power to emerge, whether that be Abu Mazen or someone from the next generation. Moderation will not be an asset for those competing in this contest.

In terms of domestic politics, Abu Mazen will not be able to install supporters--even if he can find them--to dominate decisively the PA cabinet, the Palestinian Legislative Council or the security services, since appeasing the Fatah establishment will use up most of his patronage. Even implementing the much-discussed plan to put all the security agencies under a single commander would turn the other officers against him.

It will be far easier for Abu Mazen, then, to make no changes in the movement's doctrine or command structure but rather to merely announce such changes, putting his emphasis on convincing the West that Israel must be pressed for unilateral concessions as a way of "helping" Palestinian moderates. For example, he can condemn terrorism and even say he is ordering security forces to stop it, without stopping attacks by force or really putting perpetrators in prison. By showing Western countries at least a general effort to implement the Road Map requirements, he hopes they will pressure Israel to move rapidly toward instituting a Palestinian state without major Palestinian concessions.

Abu Mazen and many within the Fatah establishment also know that a ceasefire is in their interests. Ironically, though, they will depend on the effectiveness of Israeli countermeasures to reduce the number of casualties and successful attacks on its own civilians. This failure of the attacks that Palestinians plan or launch would allow Abu Mazen to insist that the Palestinians are not fighting, without his having to kill--or credibly threaten to kill--Hamas and Al-Aqsa Brigade terrorists.

Aside from giving moderate-sounding interviews to the Western media, even the most basic steps by Abu Mazen cannot be taken for granted. Will Fatah members involved in terrorist attacks be punished? With the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades determined to continue the violence, this is especially unlikely. Will security services shoot or arrest Hamas terrorists firing missiles on Israeli targets? Abu Mazen says that while he would like them to stop fighting, he will not use violence against his own people.

Under such circumstances, however, the militants know they can sabotage negotiations at will. Even if they accept Abu Mazen's strategy for a period of time, they will be inclined to return to warfare unless it yields quick and dramatic results. Meanwhile, they can outbid their rivals by labeling them traitors, American or Israeli agents, or at least the perpetrators of a failed policy that must be abandoned.

Yet even the Fatah establishment has serious reservations about a real moderate approach. By refusing to make compromises on key issues--especially the so-called right of return or border modifications--or to live up to their commitments to stopping terrorism and incitement, Abu Mazen's own colleagues are likely to sabotage progress toward peace. They can then point to the fact that they have not yet achieved a state, an end to the occupation, or the dismantling of all Jewish settlements as proof that Israel and the United States are against peace.

Consequently, since he is unable to take the steps necessary to make peace with Israel, he will hope that the United States and Europe hand him a solution getting him a state with a minimal effort by his own side. He will explain that the best way to help the moderates is to obtain unilateral concessions for them from Israel. Ultimately, however, Israel will demand proof that he will make some compromises and implement his own commitments.

Abu Mazen will face several specific tests that will allow a clear measurement of his intentions and ability to deliver on his promises. First, will he ban anti-Israel incitement to commit terrorism in the Palestinian media, schools, mosques, and statements made by PA, PLO and Fatah officials? This requires an actual change in behavior and not merely stories in foreign Arab newspapers that the PA is considering such steps. An easy way out for him is to end direct calls to kill Israelis while continuing to let others teach that Israel is illegitimate, that all the land belongs to--and in the future will be regained by--the Palestinians, and that the only satisfactory solution is a complete right of return.

Second, is he willing or able to implement a real ceasefire in which the PA stops planned attacks, punishes those who have committed them, stops arms smuggling, and confiscates weapons? An attractive alternative is to denounce successful attacks while only making a minimal effort to prevent them.

Third, will the "new" leadership express self-criticism over past policies and give its people a realistic analysis of their situation and advocate a lasting two-state solution? An easier approach is to be vague, demanding a state made up of all of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem without promising an end of the conflict or the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in a Palestinian state in return. In addition, all the Palestinians' problems and the regime's shortcomings could continue to be blamed on Israel.

Fourth, can Abu Mazen conduct successful negotiations for managing the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, with the PA establishing an effective administration for that area which blocks cross-border attacks while meeting the material needs of the Palestinians living there? If the PA government is unable to stop terrorist attacks and missile firings, Israeli troops will return, bringing clashes with Palestinian forces and irresistible pressure on Abu Mazen to return to full-scale warfare.

Fifth, when peace talks with Israel reconvene, will Abu Mazen be able to negotiate freely, or will his hands be tied by the Fatah establishment and young insurgents? Otherwise, negotiations will merely be occasions for Palestinian representatives to repeat accusations against Israel and their own maximalist demands.

Certainly, the situation can be improved and the level of violence can decrease. The PA can take over all of Gaza and the Israeli troop presence in the West Bank can be reduced to the mostly uninhabited parts and small number of roadblocks that existed before Ararat started the second intifada in 2000. But unless there is a Palestinian leadership able to move far beyond the legacy left by Ararat and impose new policies on the movement, no amount of diplomatic activity, special envoys, peace plans or meetings will produce any result.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the journal MERIA. He is the author, most recently, of The Tragedy of the Middle East (2002), and co-author of Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography (2003) and Hating America (2004).