The death of Arafat is also important. None of his replacements will ever have his mystique or his undeserved aura of legitimacy. This frees many people (liberals, European elites, etc.) to treat the PA and its leaders as they deserve, without ever having to suffer the political and social discomfort that rejecting Arafat would have entailed.

You can say “Well maybe Abbas isn’t really a man of peace.” *without* implicitly calling the Nobel committee a bunch of dupes.