A few notes on Yasser Arafat:

First, he is very sick. Look carefully at his left hand in this picture.



My wife pointed out that it is extraordinarily pale. This is not a good sign. He is an old man who has been under stress and who has cheated death many times already. His number may be up.

Second, what happens when he goes?

Arafat has dominated Palestinian politics - no, Arafat invented Palestinian politics - no, Arafat is Palestinian politics. The conventional wisdom is that some constellation of Abu Mazen, Abu Abbas, Jibril Rajoub, and Mahmoud Dahlan and maybe some others will hold things together. The first two are old Fatah hands who hold various offices in Fatah, the PLO, and the PA. The latter two control the Preventive Security Service and will provide the muscle. I've written about these guys before.

I have my own theory. I have been writing about how Hezbollah is expanding is presence in the West Bank and Gaza. I think Hezbollah, with Iran and Syria behind them, are making a bid to take control of the Palestinians. With Arafat's passage, there is a vacuum that Hezbollah can exploit.

To this end, watch Farouq Kadoumi. He is another of the Fatah founding generation, but he never signed onto Oslo - staying in Tunisia. He remained close to the Syrians and members of the Palestinian rejectionist front. He maintained a high-level of popularity among the PLO rank and file.

There have been a number of signs that the Palestinian factions are falling into the Hezbollah-Syria-Iran orbit. Fatah was permitted to open an office in Damascus in May - there had long been bad blood between Arafat and Assad pere. Kadoumi brokered the deal. I wrote a blog entry on this Fatah on the Road to Damascus back in May in which I also quote Matt Levitt on Kadoumi's role helping Hezbollah expand its influence within the PA.

Third - Arafat's Long-term legacy:

No one did more to justify the use of terror the Arafat. Arafat's first state sponsor was Algeria, which had fought a bloody terrorist war against the French. The French, who had been there for generations, were known as settlers. Arafat was inspired by the Algerian success. He was also inspired by Franz Fanon, the idealogue of the Algerian revolution. Fanon argued that for the oppressed Third Worlder violence was cathartic. He effectively justified violence as an end in and of itself for the revolutionary. We see the logical conclusion of this vicious idea in Palestinian suicide terror and in a sense it inspired the madness of 9/11.

Arafat, to a great extent, created the Palestinian identity. But this has only brought them into bloody, self-destructive conflict with Israel and its neighboring Arab states. His maximalist demands have hurled the Palestinians into a vicious cycle when pragmatic arrangements were possible and would have brought great prosperity and progress to the Palestinian people.

Arafat has a great deal of blood on his hands - but his role in destroying two of the more sophisticated Arab polities (Lebanon and the West Bank) was his most destructive achievement. He set Arab politics back decades.

Tim O'Bryhim wrote a generous review of my book for Townhall.com and today I gave a presentation at the Heritage Foundation. The presentation was well attended and I had the wonderful, ego-building opportunity to sign some books.

The presentation was webcast and can be downloaded from the Heritage Foundation's website here.

I wrote at some length about how a Houston and Boston series would highlight how the different park effects shaped the teams. Events, both recent and less so make my comments irrelevant. Obviously it is the Cardinals playing the Red Sox.

But, also, as Soccer Dad informs me - the Astros moved to Minute Maid Field (recently Enron Field). It is, like most new parks, really a hitter's park. In fact, Fenway only nominally favors the batter - relative to league average.

As I said before, I am no longer a baseball fan and I still lament that the Orioles no longer play at Memorial Stadium where I whiled away the summer evenings of my youth out in the right field bleachers watching Eddie Murray...

Le vieux Paris n'est plus (la forme d'une ville change plus vite, helas que le coeur d'un mortel)

- Old Paris is no more (a town, alas, changes more quickly than man's heart may change)

from Baudelaire's "The Swan"