Yassir Arafat is dead, finally.

Stories are now being told and retold with the warts airbrushed from the anecdotes used in describing his life. But when the anecdotes are gathered and fitted in one place, as pieces in a picture puzzle, the one wart that cannot be removed reappears. That wart is Arafat himself, abject failure.

He is praised now but if the Palestinians achieve in a short time after his death what Arafat never accomplished in life - their dream of self-determination and an independant state - he will be seen by history as nothing other than an almost 40 year plague on his people.