Palestinian leader overplayed his hand for the last time

No more talk about the Green Line. This week Yasser Arafat crossed the red line.

Whether he lives or dies now, his story is in the past.

By encouraging, allowing or being unable to prevent two horrendous suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa that took at least 25 innocent lives, Arafat pushed Israel into a response that firmly places home security over foreign (read: American) relations, and underscores the foolhardiness of maintaining Arafat as a partner for peace.

It makes no difference whether the Palestinian chief is unable to control the murderous attacks or is orchestrating them. Either way, he is not the man for Israel to negotiate with, if he ever was. He has overplayed his last hand, advocating peace while addressing the West and calling for jihad against Israel in Arabic one time too many.

With his own Fatah people involved in a number of the most recent attacks within Israel, Arafat has been exposed as a fraud. Even the United States, which has propped him up for years, can no longer ignore the fact that he is more terrorist than statesman, squandering every opportunity to solve territorial disputes with Israel through negotiations and always resorting instead to violence.

In so doing he has brought untold suffering to his people, insisting to them that Israel and the Jews are their enemy and must be eliminated, rather than preparing the Palestinians for peace, as he pledged to do at Oslo more than eight years ago.

For the last 14 bloody months, Israel sustained thousands of violent attacks and more than 200 murders, mostly civilians far from the battlefield. Ariel Sharon tried negotiating, threatening, sending the army into Palestinian-controlled areas, eliminating the terrorist leaders. Nothing worked.

After the shocking Tel Aviv disco bombing in June, killing 21 young people, Israelis were prepared to strike against the Palestinian Authority, yet held back, giving diplomacy another chance. But the names of U.S. peacekeepers who have come and gone is dizzying. Dennis Ross gave way to George Mitchell, and George Tenet was followed by Gen. Anthony Zinni, each defeated by Palestinian refusal to submit to the logic of compromise rather than the madness of murder.

Until now Washington has refused to recognize that the key to Mideast peace was not even-handedness and honest brokering, but choosing democracy over demagoguery. The facade was kept up, though, as the United States weighed in against "the cycle of violence" when in truth there was none. Rather, there were deliberate Palestinian attacks on women and children and Israeli responses aimed at soldiers.

As recently as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Mideast policy speech two weeks ago, America insisted on a peace plan predicated on both sides doing their fair share -- Israel ceding territory in return for Palestinian pledges to try to stop the violence -- as if the requirements were equal, as if Arafat was unable to stop the killing, as if both sides had broken every promise made. That policy has been proven to be as empty as an Arafat promise.

At the outset of the intifada, debates swirled over the settlements as a hindrance to peace. But as the murders continued, in Afula and Hadera and Pardes Chana, it became increasingly clear that the battle was not over settlements or Jerusalem but Tel Aviv and the very existence of a permanent Jewish state in the region.

So now, in the wake of the most recent slaughter of Israeli youngsters and other civilians, Washington has given Israel a tacit green light to do what it must to stop the terrorism. It will not last long, this window of opportunity. Soon enough the Arab states and the Europeans will weigh in, coming to the aid of Arafat. Has the Bush administration gotten the message, finally, that Arafat cannot or will not deliver an end to the killing?

In truth, it is quite possible that the war against terrorism cannot be won.

As long as there is an individual with more hatred in his heart than a willingness to live, and the explosives at his disposal to wreak havoc, there will be terrorism. But what Israel must do is destroy the infrastructure of terrorism: the cells, mentors, suppliers, etc., just as America seeks to do in its war against Osama bin Laden. And what America must do is place Arafat and company squarely on the side of the terrorists, and treat them accordingly.

The other day Powell said this was Arafat's "moment of truth," but such moments have come and gone for the 72-year-old founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. It is too late now. National liberation movement leaders must seize their moment of truth, as David Ben-Gurion and the founders of the state of Israel did in 1947 and 1948, choosing reality over dreams in accepting a tiny state of their own.

Arafat had his chances, most notably when he failed to accept Ehud Barak's overly generous offer at Camp David in the summer of 2000: statehood and more than 90 percent of the territories. But he rejected the plan and within weeks orchestrated or allowed the intifada to break out, stoking the fires of hatred and bloodshed ever since. He will be remembered as the man who led his people to the brink of peace, and then to the brink of despair.

Now, cornered once more, pressured into action, Arafat seeks survival, not peace. He has condemned last weekend's bombings, arrested scores of militants, and says this time he will crack down on the culprits as he did in 1996 -- for a few months. But nothing has changed. This week he has arrested only one of the more than 100 suspected terrorists whose names Israel provided him. And we must remember that in June, after the Dolphinarium bombing in Tel Aviv prompted Arafat to express shock and outrage to the West, he wrote a condolence letter to the family of the bomber, praising him for his "heroic martyrdom," as one who "turned his body into bombs...the model of manhood and sacrifice for the sake of Allah and the homeland." So much for a change of heart.

Chances are Washington remains so committed to its failed Mideast policy that it will soon resume pressure on Israel to stop its military action and move toward concessions. But maybe, just maybe, the United States has learned a more lasting lesson here, and those who were murdered so callously last weekend did not die in vain. Perhaps their deaths marked the last straw, the day America realized Arafat was still the terrorist he always was.