Jerusalem
THE SUICIDE BOMBING that killed 22 people including 6 small children in Jerusalem on August 19 ended the so-called "hudna" (cease-fire) between competing Palestinian terror groups and Israel. It also killed any pretense of faith in the "road map." The oversold peace plan collapsed upon and crushed its own creation, the young government of Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas. Controlling only 3 of Yasser Arafat's 12 "security" organizations, Abbas could not hope to meet Israeli and American demands for a crackdown on terrorists after the bus bombing, even had he wanted to.

When Arafat loyalists used Arafat-controlled Palestinian television and radio to publicly threaten Abbas with death if he tried to crack down, Abbas got the message and resigned. In the wake of his departure and the resumption of terror in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israelis too seemed to acknowledge that they had reached the end of their road. They were left with no choice but to rid themselves and the region of the menace of Yasser Arafat once and for all.

In contrast to the ceremonial installation of Abbas as the first Palestinian prime minister, Arafat's naming of his crony Ahmed Qurei to succeed Abbas was dismissed in Jerusalem. Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz, Sharon's most influential and popular minister, called Qurei a lackey whose sole purpose was to find a way to preempt his boss's expulsion.

Qurei quickly announced the formation of a "security government" whose purpose will be to "confront security threats and enforce the rule

The Israeli Security Cabinet's statement of September 11 that it had decided in principle to "remove" Arafat was the final acknowledgment that it was no longer possible to ignore the elephant in the living room. Amid all the variables that have attended this murderous conflict, Arafat is the one outstanding constant. For three years, Israelis tried everything short of facing the Arafat question head on. Nothing worked. The Mitchell Plan, the Tenet Plan, the Seven Quiet Days, the Zinni Missions, Bethlehem First, the Wolf's Lair, and finally the road map: all failures. Now, 800 dead Israelis later--15 last week alone--Israelis have concluded that it is more dangerous to host Arafat than to eliminate him.

As if waking from a national coma, Israelis suddenly realized that one man was protecting the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations from dismantlement, and he was Arafat. The one man preventing the creation of a consolidated security service capable of fighting terror was Arafat. Arafat was working to kill the road map so that its goal of establishing a Palestinian state at peace with Israel could never be realized. Even the most dovish Israelis no longer seem interested in denying the obvious: It isn't Israel that is preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. It's Arafat, whose goal is not a Palestine next to Israel, but rather Israel itself. A Palestinian state at peace with Israel is a greater threat to Arafat than it is to Israel. Understanding that makes it easy to see why, given the choice between the road map and Hamas, Arafat chose Hamas. They share the same goal: the destruction of Israel.