Arafat must choose between terrorism and peace-making

For weeks, Israel has taken the position that it would not reopen negotiations with the Palestinian Authority until a week had passed without an act of terrorism by Palestinian militants. Rather than accept the challenge, Yasser Arafat and Palestinian Authority spokesmen took the position that Israel was making an unreasonable demand.
It took the slaughter of 26 more people over the weekend, many of them Israeli teen-agers, to make it clear even to Arafat that he must act forcefully against the terrorists in his midst or all will be lost.
Extremist view: Arafat says he's interested in peace. He has said so at the White House, at Camp David, at Oslo, at the Wye River Plantation. But extremist groups such as Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which took credit for the weekend attacks, don't want peace.
The young men who strap bombs loaded with nails onto their bodies and walk into malls, cafes and pizza shops or board buses on their murderous errands have not been indoctrinated to look forward to the day when they will have a Palestinian state. They have been taught to hate Jews and to die for one cause -- the eventual destruction of Israel.
And the timing of these latest attacks are no accident. They are designed to derail any possible peace talks with Israel and to force the United States to take a position that might jeopardize the fragile coalition between the United States and Middle Eastern nations in a war against terrorism.
The same people who danced in the streets when the World Trade Centers collapsed, the same people who say there is no evidence Osama bin Laden is involved in terrorism despite his own admissions, the same people who claim that agents of Israel, not Al-Qaida, hijacked the planes on September 11 -- these same people dream not of peaceful coexistence, but of victory in a holy war.
Consistency: Even as President Bush led a war against the Taliban for its support and protection of bin Laden and Al-Qaida, Israeli President Ariel Sharon has a right to declare war against those who support and protect Hamas. And even though recognizing the truth of that puts the United States in a most difficult position, it must. To do otherwise would be cowardly and hypocritical.
The best hope for Arafat, Israel, and, indeed, the rest of the world, is if a majority of his people still believe in the cause of peace and support him as he does what he has to do to wipe out terrorist cells in the West Bank and Gaza. That might be hoping for too much.