Andrew Gowers

While one of the more reprehensible figures on the historic stage of Middle Eastern politics during the last fifty years, Arafat as a character is nonetheless engrossing. This biography is a warts-and-all history of Yassar Arafat that, at the same time, gives the reader a good introduction into the morass of Middle East political intrigue. It helps clarify Arafat's role in many of the struggles between Israel and the Arab countries (Lebanon incursion, the Achille Lauro crimes, the structuring of the PLO and Fatah, etc.), and chronicles his political and personal ups and downs as he crafted an image for himself as the indispensable "statesman" in any Middle East settlement. His exploitation of Palestinian dislocation and dysfunction to his own benefit earns him a place among the more ruthless and brutal political leaders of the twentieth century. The book reads well and is well researched and fact based, where facts can be determined without the mythological overlay. Where the mythology becomes the dominant image, the authors inject needed realism in their interpretation of events and happenings.… (altro)