And among those who can identify Abu Mazen — or Mahmoud Abbas, to use his non-political name — as Arafat’s successor, who knows anything about him?

Arafat emerged as the face of the Palestinian people by dint of his history and personality, charisma and guile, cajoling and bullying, luck and sheer perseverance. He was uniquely suited to his people’s condition: defeated, dispossessed and dispersed, without a state to defend them, a territory to hold them, or a political strategy to unite them. His goal was national unity, without which, he believed, nothing could be achieved.

Abu Mazen is, like Arafat, a rarity: a genuinely national Palestinian figure, but in a radically dissimilar fashion. Arafat attained national status by identifying and belonging to every single Palestinian constituency and factional interest; Abu Mazen did so by identifying with none. Arafat immersed himself in local politics; Abu Mazen floats above it, his service being to the Palestinian national movement as a whole.

The Old Man ruled through an overwhelming and overpowering rhetorical and physical presence. A man of few words but many deeds, the new Palestinian president has built a career running away from the limelight.

Abu Mazen was born in what is now Israel in 1935. A founding member of Fatah, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee, an adviser to Arafat and principal behind-the-scenes negotiator from the Madrid conference in 1991 to the Oslo accords in 1993, he was often influential but seldom visible. Until now, his one brush with public office was his short-lived tenure as prime minister in 2003.

With Arafat’s passing, the politics of weightiness are over; enter the politics of the light touch.

Arafat inhabited a world where what mattered was the impact of language, not the actual meaning of words, and where myths combined with facts to produce reality.

Abu Mazen’s world is more rooted in what is familiar and recognised by most people as the order of things; his reality far less animated by the ghosts of the past. Instead of the politics of ambiguous and creative intensity, he stands for the politics of cool, clear rationality.

He is a politician of conviction — which is to say, until recently, not much of a politician at all. His behaviour is rarely scheming but guided by a deep sense of ethics, repugnance for political expediency and an exaggerated faith in the power of reason. Convinced he has logic and reason on his side, and that these are the faculties which guide all others, he is apt to wait passively in negotiation until people see things his way.

There is little of the manipulator, deceiver or conspirator in him, which is perhaps why he is so unforgiving of the manipulations, deceptions and conspiracies of others.

That was the key to his seesaw relationship with Arafat. He did not hesitate to disagree with the Old Man, but he chose seclusion over confrontation. Even in his anger, Arafat knew Abu Mazen’s motivations were sincere, unlike those of so many colleagues. He rarely lost trust in him and almost always forgave him.

Abu Mazen is a profoundly pious Muslim. Inspired by Islam but allergic to its role in politics, he prays daily and fasts at Ramadan but publicises neither, feeling religion is not a matter of public display. In his now regular dealings with leaders of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, this gives him an unmistakable edge. He is convinced he is no less a Muslim than they are and when he meets a self-proclaimed Islamist politician, he sees the politician not the Islamist.