A public opinion poll published this week by the Bet Sahour-based Palestinian Center for Public Opinion showed that 73 percent of the Palestinians miss Yasser Arafat. The poll, which covered a random sample of 825 Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was conducted on the eve of the first anniversary of Arafat's death.

Commenting on the results of the poll, a Palestinian legislator, known as a longtime critic of Arafat, asked cynically: "What do these people miss about Arafat? Do they miss the corruption and mismanagement of his regime, or do they miss him simply because they think that things haven't improved since his departure?"...

...Asked if she was planning to attend the memorial service in the Mukata, Rasha Shaheen, a university student from Ramallah, replied: "We want to look forward, not backward. We loved Arafat as a symbol, but more and more people are beginning to realize that this is a man who led us from one disaster to another over the past 40 years."

Of course, such reactions never make their way into the PA-controlled media, despite the fact that these are not lone voices in the desert. Nor do they appear in most of the foreign media because many people still think that it's wrong to "hang dirty laundry in public."...