Yasser Arafat ruined my lunch

I became an unwitting victim of the Middle East crisis (is the Middle East ever out of crisis?) last week. I know one of the BBC correspondents here in Paris vaguely, and every month or so we have lunch. Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life when you have a job like that that occasionally the news agenda takes over, and our latest lunch date was called off as Arafat arrived here to die in a military hospital somewhere outside the city. Actually, if you believe Reuters, he’s already dead.

I wonder whether things will get better or worse after Arafat?