Palestinian genius and failure are incarnated in Yasser Arafat. For nearly three decades his bulging eyes, designer stubble and watery lips, -- and Arab headdress immaculately folded to resemble the map of Palestine -- have filled the world's screens proclaiming the rights of his dispossessed people.

After a lifetime of struggle, the Leader in Exile, the archetypal terrorist-turned-statesman, has returned as President of the Palestine Authority, the forerunner of the Palestinian state. But this is no story of liberation. The capacity in which Arafat has come to power, the role he occupies, is one of peculiarly Middle Eastern complexity, where cynicism and idealism, passion and realpolitik, meet in equal portions. Lining the pockets of his entourage with Western aid, his primary functionis to act as Israel's policeman in those parts of the formerly Occupied Territories the Israelis could no longer reach.

In the cruellest of many ironies, Arafat came to power as a result of the one Palestinian revolution with which he had very little to do. The Intifada, a spontaneous uprising led by children, succeeded in influencing world opinion, where years of ``armed struggle'' had failed.

The image of the Palestinian as terrorist was replaced by that of a child being beaten by an Israeli soldier. How did this extraordinary denouement come about? As Said Aburish explains in this thoroughly researched account, Arafat is relatively uneducated. As a political strategist he was brilliant, but on broader geopolitical questions he lacks sophistication. During the years of exile after the 1967 war, his instincts, courage and persistence made him a highly effective leader. Arafat understands the value of the ``propaganda of the deed''.

The engagements against Israel, with al-Fatah mounting hundreds ofraids from Gaza and Jordan before 1970, scarcely dented the armour of one of the world's most formidable military powers. But they served to open Arab wallets. Just as Israel had exploited the feelings of guilt and solidarity among US Jews, so the PLO benefited from the wealth and influence of Palestinians in the Gulf.

Aburish convincingly argues that the strategy was sound, and could have been made to work. The challenge to King Hussein of Jordan, which forced him to act against the Palestinians, was a military disaster, but it effectively severed the link between the Occupied Territories and the Hashemite monarchy. Even the disastrous civil war in Lebanon left the PLO intact, while tarnishing Israel's image in the West.

Arafat's failure has been moral rather than strategic. Though not personally corrupt -- he neither drinks nor smokes and works an 18-hour day -- even in Lebanon he surrounded himself with spivs and sycophants, who preferred the bars and brothels of Beirut to political struggle. Aboveall, during the years of quasi-government in exile he neglected the new politically sophisticated leadership in the West Bank. Swayed by populist sentiment during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91, he foolishly supported Saddam Hussein when even Hamas was calling for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.

The result was bankruptcy as the Gulf states withdrew funding from the PLO. Desperate to secure a peace, and his own position, he was forced to the conference table with no bargaining chips.

Installed (in effect by the Israelis) under the Oslo accords, he heads an administration in which torture and corruption appear to be the rule. The last of his able and decent West Bank Ministers, Hanan Ashrawi, recently deserted him.

When a new leadership emerges in the wake of his rapidly advancing disease, it will come, Aburish hopes, from Ashrawi and her colleagues Haidar Abdul Shafi and Faisal Husseini, and not from the corrupt coterie currently surrounding the ``President''.

Said K Aburish's book is titled Arafat:From Defender to Dictator