The death of Yasser Arafat may lead to violence in the short term but could bring a long-standing peace.

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That was the assessment of Deborah Gerner, a Kansas University political science professor who met with Arafat on multiple occasions and has studied the Middle East for more than 25 years.

“The United States and Israeli governments have been using the ‘Arafat is not a partner for peace’ argument for quite some time,” Gerner said. “They no longer have that argument.”

Gerner met with Arafat most recently in 2002 with about a dozen attendees at a conference in Ramallah.

“He does have a legacy,” she said. “He is the individual who kept the Palestinian issue on the world agenda at a time when many other national independence movements had virtually no attention paid to them.”

Gerner said she feared Arafat’s death, which occurred Wednesday, would lead to turbulence both in Israeli-Palestinian relations and internal politics in Palestine.

One of the biggest questions, she said, is how smooth the political transition will be. Elections probably will be difficult in Israeli-occupied Palestine, she said.

“It’s not at all clear how you can hold fair, open legitimate elections without freedom of movement,” she said.

Gerner said she continued to think U.S. involvement would be necessary in finding peace between Israel and Palestine. She said a change in Palestinian leadership might be enough to open talks to create a peaceful pact.

“There is an opportunity,” she said. “There are solutions that are viable. The ordinary people desperately want that. I do not believe the majority of Palestinians hate Jews, and I don’t believe the majority of Israeli Jews hate Palestinians. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding and fear, but I think those things can be worked out.”