Changing Of The Guard

This is a great article about the split in the Palestinian Authority between the older Arafat-aligned clique and the younger, go-for-broke types. With all the disagreements between Nationalists and Fundamentalist Islamists, it’s unsettlingly like old Irish politics.
Arafat continues to give the Palestinian public a sense of stability, thus preventing large-scale breakdown of law and order. His presence deters the Islamists from posing an immediate threat to the shaky dominance of the nationalists; in his absence, all hell could break loose.