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Palestinian Christians, Jews, and scholars see Yasser Arafat variously as hero, impediment to peace, freedom fighter, or one of the 20th century's most diabolical rulers. After nearly four years of confinement to his Ramallah compound, Arafat died Thursday after falling into a coma in a Paris hospital. He was 75.

Arafat was a gun smuggler, fighting Jews in what is now Israel even before the founding of the modern state of Israel amid the 1948 war. For Gary Burge, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and author of Who Are God's People in the Middle East? What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians understanding Arafat requires understanding the fight that defined his life. "There is a generation of Palestinian leaders whose worldview was shaped by war and occupation," Burge says. Among his spectacular terror exploits was the murder of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics

After being driven out of Lebanon in 1982, Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization eventually returned to Gaza. Officially giving up terrorism, Arafat began negotiating with Israel, and the 1993 Oslo agreement began Palestinian autonomy in Gaza. Arafat became the head of the Palestinian Authority. "But the occupation continues," says Burge. "The war has stopped, but occupation has continued. So, in his mind resistance had continued to be a necessary part of Palestinian life."

To Jews, Arafat's inability to forsake "resistance" made him the major impediment to peace. "Arafat was never to be trusted in the eyes of most Israelis," says Rabbi Yechiel Z. Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

Eckstein says Arafat created modern Islamic terrorism, with high profile attacks. "The first suicide bombings came from the Palestinians. … They taught the world about terrorism in terms of hijacking planes, killing innocent civilians like at the Olympics. These weren't the radical groups, these were Arafat."

Still, many hoped he would be able to help bring peace, Eckstein says, until Arafat disillusioned Israelis following the 2000 meeting with Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton.

At the Camp David Accord of 2000, Barak offered Arafat and the Palestinians "97 percent of the territories, half of Jerusalem, essentially everything that he could want. And he turned it down and started this whole jihad against Israel," Eckstein said.

But Burge says the offer would have been unacceptable to any Palestinian. "It turned the West Bank into Swiss cheese" and made a Palestinian state impossible. Also, "Arafat had to always walk on a tightrope because there are extreme voices in the Palestinian world and moderate ones." Burge says radical groups would not have allowed Arafat to surrender their two most important demands: the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and Jerusalem as the capital.

Palestinian Christians view Israel, not Arafat, as the problem. Arafat loved and cared for the Palestinian people, says Bishara Awad, president of Bethlehem Bible College. He described Arafat as someone who was "sincere about trying to work for peace and justice for his people, for the liberation of the Palestinian territory."

"He has been on the scene since 1965 as a leader of the Palestinians—first the PLO and then of the Palestinian Authority after 1993 and the Oslo agreement," Bishara Awad says. "The Palestinians have not known any other leader."

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November (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48