The sad and futile deaths yesterday in suicide bombings of nine more people in Israel have again prompted a predictable Israeli reaction. The stop-go peace process has been stalled by the postponement by Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, of his planned visit to Washington only a day after he met the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, for the first time. Palestinian communities will be bracing themselves for the usual military retaliation.
But last night Israeli officials were also directly linking the attacks to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, suggesting he had encouraged Hamas to undermine the newly-installed Mr Abbas. And they hinted that the Israeli Government may now move to expel Mr Arafat from the Palestinian territories. "There has to be a surgical operation that would sever one element of that government moonlighting as a terrorist organisation ... from that part that wants to steer a different course of action," one of Mr Sharon's aides, Mr Raanan Gissin, told reporters. "(Mr Sharon)...wants to take care of business before he goes to the United States. I believe the President of the United States will understand very well why we postponed this trip."
Yet such a move, far from strengthening Mr Abbas, is likely to seriously undermine him. Instead of giving Mr Abbas space and time to establish his authority, a demonstration of his powerlessness to protect Mr Arafat would be grist to the Hamas propaganda mill. How better to prove the extremists' proposition that he is selling out to Sharon? How better to make the "confidence-building measures" required by the internationally-backed "road map" politically even more difficult? The largely discredited Mr Arafat's standing in his own community would also, inevitably, be boosted by exile.
Commentators sympathetic to the Israeli Government dispute widespread assessments of Mr Sharon as a determined opponent of the peace process. They argue that if anyone can make a deal it is Mr Sharon, precisely because of his credentials as a hawk, and that he would like to leave a settlement of the conflict as his political legacy. But Mr Sharon does not make that an easy case to argue.
In recent days he has closed off Gaza to international observers, given strong hints to illegal settlers that they do not have to fear concessions, and refused to give unambiguous backing to the "road map". And yet, Saturday's meeting with Mr Abbas, the first significant dialogue between the two leaderships in two years, was a step forward. Reports suggest both men discussed confidence-building measures, with the Palestinians said to be willing to implement security measures unilaterally if Israel will accept the road map. And Israeli papers hint at a possible Israeli withdrawal from part of Gaza and economic concessions to the Palestinians. Such moves would do infinitely more to establish the viability of a political alternative to Arafat than the usual, easy knee-jerk reaction that has become all too familiar.