ALBRIGHT: CAN SHE HELP?

This was No. 20--the 20th suicide attack on Israeli targets since the day in September 1993 when the Israelis signed a peace accord with the Palestinians. The 20th time fanatical Palestinians sought to kill and maim as many Israelis as they and their weapons could reach. The 20th time men opposed to peace have tried to drown the process in pools of blood.

Last Thursday there were three of them, one apparently dressed as a woman. They stationed themselves along the Ben Yehuda promenade in the heart of west Jerusalem, where residents and tourists pack the pedestrian mall to shop and sip drinks at outdoor cafes. Within eyesight of one another, the three detonated their bombs packed with 4 lbs. of explosives, filled with nails and screws.

Their object was, of course, to kill. In that they succeeded, unleashing a blast that could be heard miles away as it blew them apart, killing four Israelis and wounding almost 200 more. For the second time in six weeks, paramedics and police raced to handle grisly carnage on Jerusalem's streets: a little girl's body lying mangled in an alley, a headless corpse resting nearby, arms and legs scattered everywhere, blood sprayed on the front of a bank, bits of flesh left for ultra-Orthodox volunteers to scoop up for burial.

The bombers' object, though, is also to frighten: to scare Israelis, Palestinians and Washington into giving up the process of reconciliation begun four years ago. Security officials in Israel and the U.S. had been bracing for some kind of terrorist strike before Secretary of State Madeleine Albright embarked on her first Middle East mission this week. Security had been beefed up on Ben Yehuda Street, one of three popular public areas the Israelis had specifically suspected might be hit. Yet the suicide bombers demonstrated once again that they could strike at will, reopening the cycle of violence and punishment that has done so much to blight the peace process.

But they did not scare Albright away. Now more than ever, said a vacationing President Clinton, was her presence needed there. "The perpetrators of this attack intended to kill both innocent people and the peace process itself," he said. "They must not be allowed to succeed."

The Ben Yehuda attack did succeed in making what little progress the American Secretary had hoped to achieve this week even more difficult. "Poor Madeleine is going out there, expected to put Humpty Dumpty back together again," admitted one of her aides, "but it's an almost impossible mission." This was already a major test of Albright's blunt and brassy diplomacy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat are now so mutually distrustful, so hamstrung by extremist political constituents, that they cannot bear to talk to each other, much less negotiate in good faith. In a situation where toughness and the matching of wills are not always enough, even her most ardent admirers wonder whether Albright can help them climb out of the mess.