Forced Off The Road

Is

the Bush Administration's road map for Middle East peace dead? At the very least, it seems likely to go on a long hiatus. Although Administration officials insist the peace process can survive the resignation last weekend of Mahmoud Abbas as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, the U.S. has lost the one Palestinian leader with whom it believed it could do business. In response, the Administration hopes to punish Yasser Arafat for undermining Abbas' efforts to assert authority over the Palestinian security apparatus and crack down on militant groups like Hamas. A senior State Department official says the U.S. plans to push European and Arab leaders to cut ties with Arafat and demand that the Palestinians elect a new leader. "We don't work with Arafat," says the official. "We're not going to work with Arafat."

But the U.S. has few alternatives to Arafat. The Administration tacitly admitted as much last month, when Secretary of State Colin Powell implored Arafat to help Abbas disarm Hamas. Now Arafat's position may be even stronger. Although U.S. officials say they haven't given up hope that Abbas will return, Palestinian sources say there's little chance Abbas — who tearfully accused Arafat of inciting threats against him — would return under Arafat. Among the possible successors to Abbas are Ahmed Qureia, speaker of the Palestinian parliament; Nabil Shaath, who served as Abbas' Foreign Minister; and Munib al-Masri, a Palestinian businessman.

In any event, Israel is intent on wiping out Hamas on its own. Hours after Abbas' resignation, Israeli forces bombed an apartment in Gaza City where Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, was believed to be meeting with the organization's top two military officials. Hamas leaders promised revenge for the strike, which slightly wounded Yassin. "Our operations," said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a top official, "will strike everywhere."