Palestinians of almost all factions remembered with sadness the absence of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, marking the 18th anniversary of his death last Thursday. Arafat’s Fatah movement had the lion’s share of public events for the occasion, in an attempt by different wings of the movement to flex their political muscle and show that they are more loyal to the absent leader than all others.
Yet the loud voices on this anniversary of Arafat’s death are more a reflection of the disarray of the leading nationalist movement than of mere sorrow over the absence of the founding member of a national movement that succeeded in giving Palestinians and their efforts a strong voice for decades.