Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar) was a man of many intricacies, whose fabric encompassed many layers of the Palestinian cause and struggle for recognition. This is how one former aide and adviser to the Palestinian leader speaking on condition of anonymity characterized him.

"Although Arafat was religious he allied himself with the Soviets and communism and this shows that he was extremely political in nature and doesn't have dogma," said the adviser.

When the Palestinian leader first contemplated entering an alliance with the Soviets, Arafat said to an aide, "Whoever doesn't have an uncle, buys an uncle. The Israelis have the Americans so the Palestinians can have the Soviets."

This political person who dealt with Arab kings and presidents in times of war and in times of peace was capable of balancing various dimensions.

"He was on a very close relationship with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia who considered communism as Zionism and Zionism as communism, but Arafat was vigilant about preserving his friendship with King Faisal as well as with Fidel Castro, Leonid Brezhnev, the French and the English," said the former adviser.

But that was then and now the dynamics on the ground are much different and essentially demand a different style of leadership, one that isn't rooted in antiquated traditions. And this isn't merely an American or Israeli demand but has long been a demand of the Palestinian people who have suffered the brunt of the failure of the peace process.

To a certain extent Arafat's death will create a void in Palestinian consciousness, says Haidar Abdel-Shafi, a respected Palestinian figure who led the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Peace conference in 1991 and is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

"The main failure was to realize a united Palestinian front. The position remained with many political factions that remained separate while the situation demanded very much a united Palestinian position by having all the factions without exception into one body that can air their views and finally vote for a untied position," says Shafi.

So will the past teach us about what to expect from the next Palestinian leadership? There are many lessons to be drawn but only to a certain extent. "I don't think the past is much help here. I think we are in a completely new world. I hope the leaders learn from Yasser Arafat's mistakes and I hope they realize that they are in a completely different era than he started out in," says Rashid Khalidi who is the Edward said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University.

The era Arafat started out in was one in which Palestinian politics operated in an inter-Arab context. But the environment in the Middle East and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have metamorphosed in so many ways, that the realities on the ground illustrate how the situation is a great deal more complicated than when the struggle for statehood was first conceived.

In fact, says Khalidi, they operate in an Israeli, American, European context and a world context, which in his words, "is light years away from where the generation that founded the Palestinian national movement operated in." A generation that when one thinks about belongs to the times of King Farouk of Egypt in the 1950s, when King George of England was on the throne, when Truman was president of the US.

The people who have run Palestinian politics for the last 50 years came together in the 1940s and 1950s. Palestinians today find themselves at a new juncture, a new era, one that will require vitality, an engaging leadership and the collective participation of the Palestinian people to help define who they are in this century and how to move forward toward eventual independence.

"We need to be efficient, we need to be pragmatic, we need to be functional, and we need to be ruthless, honest, clear and straightforward. I am not sure those are qualities that we would all associate with the leadership that had to navigate the shark- infested waters of the Arab world in the 1960s and 1970s in order to establish the Palestinian national movement," says Khalidi. "Its time for a move not just from Arafat to this interim leadership but hopefully soon to a completely new generation of leaders who have a different formation and who can do different things."

It will be difficult to replace Arafat. And perhaps no one should try to. Change, while fluid can be healthy. "I think it is time for the Palestinians to develop institutions. It's time to have power shared and it's time for the Palestinians to move from the stage of the gigantic leader, the founding father figure, to a stage of maturity."

The mayhem of the second intifada, as argued by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), has done more harm than good to the Palestinian cause and to the Palestinian people. It allowed the Israelis to recant on their commitments to Oslo and it chipped away slowly whatever gains came from the Arafat-Rabin era. It reignited bitterness and animosity among both peoples and it has allowed extremists on both sides to gain ground.

"The violence in the last four years is mainly because Arafat could not sign an agreement whereby he will admit and recognize a Jewish state. He couldn't live with it. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians want to move ahead, but the fact that they do doesn't solve the main problem of the right of return," says Gil Feiler, a prominent political and economic Israeli analyst.

But Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and former negotiator in the Palestinian delegation says allocating all the blame to Arafat is unjustified.

"It's absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who has any sense understands that Arafat was the one who legitimized negotiations, who recognized Israel, who signed onto the Oslo Declaration of Principles," she says.

She adds: "It was unfortunately the attitude of the Israelis, the mentality of the occupier, the refusal to implement signed agreements and then later on their insistence on dictating their will that scuttled the peace process. They are trying to justify their own failure and their own lack of failure and their own lack of will to achieve peace."

The demise of Abu Ammar marks a new dawn in Palestinian history. The transition of power thus far signifies the ability of the Palestinian people to have a cohesive and pluralistic Palestinian leadership, one that will hopefully exercise its duties and obligations in a democratic fashion.

"So far there has been a remarkable degree of responsibility show," says Khalidi. "Things have moved relatively smoothly to an interim leadership. There is now an interim takeover over the presidency for 60 days, of the PA, of the PLO executive committee and of the Fatah central committee. We will see if it is possible to have an equally smooth transition to more stable, more permanent leadership - ideally democratically elected leaders."

Time will tell.

However he is labeled and whatever the verdict may be, one thing can be said about Abu Ammar - he was a man with a great deal of experience, who swayed in the direction of the wind. His was a tumultuous journey. And like most charismatic leaders he has had a difficult legacy.

"Arafat headed a revolution," says his former adviser, "and the void he leaves behind won't be filled by anyone but the people themselves."

Massoud A. Derhally is a free-lance journalist covering the Gulf, Levant and North Africa.