The Teflon Guerrilla Summary and Analysis

The term Teflon guerrilla is used to refer to Yasir Arafat. "He is, in many ways, the Ronald Reagan of Palestinian politics - an agent of change for his nation, a great actor who understands the soul of his people and how to play out their greatest fantasies, and, most of all, the ultimate Teflon guerrilla. Nothing stuck to Yasir Arafat - no bullets, not criticism, not any particular political position, and, most of all not failure. No matter what mistakes he made, no matter how many military defeats he sustained, no matter how long he took to recover Palestine, his people forgave him and he remained atop the PLO" (Chapter 5, p. 107). Arafat is a debonair dashing figure but that is not the secret of his success.

Arafat's secret to success is the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation...