BIBI'S BLACK DAYS

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Har Homa or Jabal Abu Ghneim? Two weeks ago, the empty hillside on the southern reaches of Jerusalem was just an obscure plot with a Hebrew name and an Arabic one. But as big yellow bulldozers began to claim the hill for Jewish houses, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was converting the landscape into a perilous flash point. Palestinians hurled stones, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas, Arab leaders issued harsh denunciations, and every single friend of Israel's disapproved. Defying them all, knowing he risked far more serious violence, Netanyahu ordered the bulldozers to dig on. Now history will decide whether those few square yards were a necessary, legitimate addition to Israel's housing stock or a flaming brand tossed on the pyre of Palestinian impatience and despair.

Black days come all too often in Israel, and Friday was another. Members of the extremist group Hamas gave their own judgment when they shattered the Jewish holiday afternoon in downtown Tel Aviv with a powerful bomb. As costumed merrymakers paraded down the city's streets to celebrate Purim, which commemorates the deliverance of the Jews in ancient Persia from a plot to slaughter them, a man entered one of the cafes and detonated himself, killing three Israelis and injuring at least 47 more. A six-month-old girl, her tiny, blood-soaked body cradled in a policewoman's arms, added one more horrific image to the Holy Land's chronicle of tragedies. Violence erupted again the next day, as hundreds of Palestinians rioted in Hebron, and Israeli soldiers responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.

Though last week's suicide attack was the first since Netanyahu became Prime Minister last May, he has amassed a stunning record for brinkmanship during his first 300 days: three major crises in the peace negotiations; a war scare with Syria; a domestic political scandal that threatens to indict his closest aides for corruption; the alienation at one time or another of virtually all his friends, constituents and foreign allies. In the aftermath of Friday's blast, many were debating who bore the most blame and whether the peace process, already damaged goods, was now beyond repair.

Arafat played his own devil's hand. As anger rose over Har Homa, the wily Palestinian leader publicly ordered his followers to abjure violence and protest peacefully--and also freed dozens of Hamas warriors from Palestinian jail cells, including military-operations chief Ibrahim Maqadmah. If he did not literally give "the green light" for the attack, as Netanyahu charged, he did not have to. Within minutes, Hamas proudly claimed responsibility. At a rally in Gaza, Maqadmah bragged, "Jerusalem will not be restored by negotiations but only by holy war."

For Netanyahu, who won election on his promise to bring peace with security, the deaths in Tel Aviv cannot help raising questions about whether his way is working. When reporters standing amid the cafe wreckage suggested Har Homa had contributed to the bloodshed, Netanyahu bristled, "Nothing justifies terrorism." He is surely right about that, and there is an incalculable moral difference between building on disputed land and setting off a bomb in a cafe. But violence is the only real lever the Palestinians have in their conflict with the Israelis, so scenes like that in Tel Aviv are certain to be repeated.