"Shikaki says a survey in May by the Center for Palestine Research and Studies shows support for Arafat at 35%, a drop from a peak of 75% at the end of 1995. The same survey shows 48% of Palestinians said they would like Arafat to have only a ceremonial role.
"It was Israel's six-week Operation Defensive Shield -- a broad military offensive into areas ceded to the Palestinian Authority under previous peace accords -- that gave many Palestinians the courage to demand change."
polls from the JMCC, discussed recently here, i believe, show precisely the opposite of the claim made in the second paragraph. that is, the six week offensive actually improved the standing of arafat and other palestinian leaders (including in hamas and islamic jihad (iirc)) compared to preceding polls.
my opinion looking at this is that the poll takes advantage of a general long-term decline in palestinians' attitudes toward arafat to draw the dubious (and unsupported by the numbers provided in the article, at least) conclusion that sharon's offensive opened the eyes of palestinians to the ineffectiveness of suicide bombings rather than causing them to circle the national-ideological wagons.
nb: i haven't yet gone and looked at the survey cited in the article. that's the next step. ;-)
j