Road Map To Hell

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There is never a precise beginning for these spasms of violence, but this one seems to have been set in motion on Aug. 8, when Israeli troops, raiding an explosives lab in Nablus, killed two Hamas activists. Hamas and the Tanzim militia responded with two small-scale suicide assaults that left two Israelis dead. Suddenly the number of daily alerts gathered by Israeli intelligence of prospective attacks jumped from 19, the lowest during the cease-fire, to 25, prompting Israel to go after Mohammed Sidr, an Islamic Jihad militant who was allegedly plotting a Jerusalem car bombing. Sidr was killed in a shoot-out. That, said Raed Abdel-Hameed Misk, 29, of Hebron, in his videotaped will, was what inspired him to blow up the Jerusalem bus. Happily married, a father of two with another on the way, weeks away from earning a master's degree at the West Bank university where he taught Islamic studies, Misk seemed an unlikely candidate for martyrdom. But he was a fervent Muslim who preached jihad at his local mosque. And he was a longtime Hamas activist who served as a liaison with different factions' leaders, including Sidr.

What's less clear is why Hamas would have ordered such a destructive act at this time. The attack may have been an act of private revenge. Some Hamas sources in the West Bank say it grew out of differences within the organization. West Bank hard-liners accused Gaza political leaders of surrendering to U.S. and Israeli pressure in accepting the truce. "Why should we sit idle while the Israelis are assassinating our leaders in Hebron and Nablus?" asked one militant. "What measures have the Israelis taken to make the lives of Palestinians less painful?"

Intentionally or not, Hamas has, in President Bush's words, "reaffirmed it is a terrorist organization" that the U.S. and Israel insist must be destroyed for the road-map plan to go forward. Both are pressing Abbas to take down the extremists once and for all: arrest their leaders, jail their operatives, collect their weapons, shut down their bomb shops, cut off their cash, ban them from the airwaves. The trouble is, the Palestinian Prime Minister, installed at Washington's bidding in March after the Bush Administration turned its back on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, doesn't have the political clout or military muscle to clash with the militants. Now his credibility and utility are on the line. He's unpopular on the Palestinian street--Gazans at Abu Shanab's funeral Friday shouted for him to resign--and he's constantly undercut by the machinations of a disgruntled Arafat. He disappointed Israel by negotiating the temporary truce; it wanted a drastic crackdown, but he feared that would spark a civil war.