LONG, desolating cycle of violence led to the terrorist atrocities perpetrated this weekend by suicide bombers in Jerusalem and Haifa. Already there are voices trying to place blame entirely on one side or the other, or to castigate hawks or doves, for causing so much cruelty and despair.
But this habit of circular self-justification is precisely what has made possible the prolonged descent of Palestinians and Israelis into the archaic horror of vendetta. The only way to stop this cycle of violence and vengeance is to intervene immediately with drastic measures, pretending - even if both sides know it is not true - that the latest horror is the first and must become the last.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has said he spoke by phone with Yasser Arafat and told him that the Hamas leaders who sent suicide bombers to kill civilians in Jerusalem and Haifa were also targeting the elected president of the Palestinian Authority. Powell said Arafat agreed that the Hamas operations were also attacks against him.
If it is not pure rhetoric, Arafat's acknowledgment that he himself has been targeted means that he will not merely be doing the will of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon if he now uses his large, well-armed security forces to uproot the terrorist apparatus of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
During his entire PLO career, Arafat's mode of operation has been to keep his friends close and his enemies closer: to preserve Palestinian unity and his own authority by leaving open possibilities for cooperation with all factions except those such as the terrorist Abu Nidal, who was determined to kill Arafat. That old habit must now be broken.
If Arafat wants to preserve the Palestinian Authority and any hope for resuming negotiations that may lead to peaceful coexistence between Israel and a truly viable Palestinian state, then he must drop all his past sophistry about opposing terrorism and take sustained actions to stop it.
He has to arrest the hundred or so bosses of the terrorist gangs, keep them behind bars, uncover and prevent terrorist operations currently in preparation, seize sites that Hamas and Islamic Jihad use as staging grounds and weapons factories, and use the intelligence capabilities of his security chiefs to penetrate and dismantle the terrorist organizations.
Those Palestinians are quite right who argue that Arafat needs some prospect of political gains if he is to take actions that many of his people will define as shutting down the Palestinian resistance to military occupation. If Sharon is wise, he will make such promises openly. But unless Arafat acts forcefully and swiftly to protect Palestinians as well as Israelis from the blind violence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, he will become one of the terrorists' many new victims.
Founders meant 'the militia'
