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The Israeli response is that the Palestinians started it. From the beginning, Israelis say, Arafat's people have violated the agreements by sneaking in arms. In 1995 Israel agreed to allow Arafat's men 240 heavy machine guns, in addition to light personal weapons. Now the Israelis say the Palestinians have hundreds more than that, many smuggled in on Arafat's own helicopters. Surveillance drones that Israel uses to keep tabs on Arafat recorded his aides' carrying heavy machine guns off the choppers "on dozens of occasions," according to a high-ranking Israeli army officer.

Israeli security officials say some holders of VIP cards, issued by the Israelis to top Palestinian officials, used their ability to travel with few checks across the bridges from Jordan to smuggle arms, until Israel cracked down during the intifadeh. Tunnels dug 50 ft. below the sandy border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt have also served as conduits for arms. Israeli troops found two such tunnels last week and destroyed them. Last May Israel intercepted a boat headed to the Gaza Strip and discovered a haul that included Strella shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles--the Russian equivalent of the Stinger. In case other Strellas have got through before or since, Israel's air-force helicopters are under orders to fly with massive floodlights trailing behind them whenever they are over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The lights glow at a temperature higher than that of the helicopter's engine, so as to attract heat-seeking missiles away from the chopper.

With that history, Israelis have been infuriated by the muted world reaction to the Karine A seizure. It took a visit to Washington by a high-ranking delegation from Israeli military and naval intelligence to get the State Department to link Arafat's Authority to the arms, though the U.S. won't tie Arafat directly to the boat. Arafat's advisers say he expects the U.S. to use his embarrassment over the Karine A to make him crack down on Hamas and another violent group, Islamic Jihad, a long-standing demand by Israel and the U.S. "I don't envy him," says an Arafat aide. "He's very isolated."

Still, it's hard to imagine the P.A.'s giving up on gunrunning altogether. The three men blamed for the Karine A operation--Fathi Razem, deputy chief of Arafat's navy; Fuad Shubaki, head of finance for the National Security Force; and Adel Mughrabi, a naval officer--are in Arafat's jails now. But there was sublime hypocrisy in that. The panel that fingered them was headed by Abdel Razak Majaideh, head of the National Security Forces in Gaza. Last year, according to senior Palestinian security sources, Majaideh was discovered to have been running a mortar factory in Gaza and selling his bombs to the highest bidder.

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