If you're tired of reading glowing eulogies about Ariel Sharon (or if you just plain hate Israel), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has the answer in the form of this screed on its opinion page by a Palestinian "information consultant" based in Ramallah:

Anyone who visits the Palestinian territories today must be shocked by the hardship that Palestinians endure. The Israeli occupation, oppressive enough under Sharon's predecessors, is infinitely worse now. Illegal settlements and barriers surround every town, crippling the movement of people and goods. This ghettoization has now been set in stone, by the concrete barrier wall transecting the West Bank. A fearsome structure, allegedly to prevent terrorism, in fact it is gobbling up more Palestinian land, and is designed to end all hopes of Palestinian statehood. Who can make a state out of a collection of ghettoes?

Had he continued, Sharon planned to so demoralize Palestinians that they would accept whatever he offered them. [snip]

Israelis will miss Sharon because he entrenched them in the land of others. But if he earns his place in history, it will be for his sleight of hand in making the world believe that the butcher had become a statesman.

Of course, the author has it exactly wrong - and ironically so. Sharon's legacy as a warrior turned peacemaker is secure. The same cannot be said of Yasir Arafat, who fooled the world into believing he was a statesman but will remembered by history as nothing more than a thug, a terrorist and a cheat whose four-decade rule achieved little, if any, benefit for the lives of the Palestinian people.