Actually Double J, the US dealt with Arafat from the Carter Administration forward. What happened at the very end of the Clinton administration was that Arafat broke his word to Clinton (as he had to so many others in the past) because the truth of it is he never really wanted to run a Palestinian state. There is a great story that during the last conversation between Clinton and Arafat, Arafat told Clinton he was a "great man," and Clinton shot back something to the effect that he might have been a great man if Arafat wasn't such a lying son of a bitch. Bush was absolutely right not to have anything to do with Arafat because he was a total liar, and it was a waste of time to try to make any deals with him because he always renegged.

I have spent some time in the Middle East and have met a number of Palestinians, many of whom said that Arafat was nothing more than a thug. He made a lot of his own people pay him "protection money," and when crimes were committed or whatever he always encouraged people not to go to the police, but to have him "fix" things.

It has been widely reported that the cause of his death was poisoning, and there is reason to believe he was poisoned by his own people, who have had enough of his crap.