I remember standing on the roof of a warehouse near Beirut harbor and observing the armed and uniformed PLO fighters, headed by Yasser Arafat, getting on the ships that took them westwards. "End of the Arafat era!" rejoiced the newspapers in Israel the next day. "Arafat is politically a dead horse!" said the radio commentators. "Thank God we are rid of him once and for all!" TV talk-show hosts announced.