Palestinian Authority

Ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's May 29 election victory, there has been a great effort on the part of Palestinian leaders, foreign diplomats and the Israeli press to discern exactly what his policy would be on peacemaking with Israel's Arab neighbors. Would Netanyahu follow through on the hard-line positions laid out consistently in his books, campaign speeches and government guidelines?

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, vowing to fight "the enemies of peace," inaugurated the newly elected Palestinian legislative council on Thursday while Israeli soldiers continued their blockade of the Palestinian-ruled territories. The swearing-in of the Palestinians' first popularly elected legislature was meant to be a happy landmark on the road to self-determination.

Battling to break the back of Islamic extremists, Israeli and Palestinian security forces raided militant strongholds from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank on Wednesday, uncovering the cell believed responsible for two recent bus bombings in Jerusalem and charging an Israeli Arab trucker with smuggling another bomber to a Tel Aviv shopping center. In Jericho, a militant accused of recruiting the Jerusalem bombers was sentenced by a Palestinian court to life in prison with hard labor.

Battling to break the back of Islamic extremists, Israeli and Palestinian security forces raided militant strongholds from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank on Wednesday, uncovering the cell believed responsible for two recent bus bombings in Jerusalem and charging an Israeli Arab trucker with smuggling another bomber to a Tel Aviv shopping center. In Jericho, a militant accused of recruiting the Jerusalem bombers was sentenced by a Palestinian court to life in prison with hard labor.

Terror can draw the undecided and the halfhearted into the politics of fear that breeds more terror and fear. This axiom is well known to the messengers of death who have struck among Israelis and Palestinians. But that terror can apparently convert determined believers in peace into opponents is a little known fact that will no doubt please the killers even more. Times of horror are times to mourn, to fear, to vent grief and rage.

As the fourth suicide bomber in nine days prepared to blow himself up in a crowd of Israelis, tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip rallied against terrorism, and residents of this Palestinian-run city wrung their hands over the quickly fading prospects for peace.

The fatal shooting of two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank has heightened fears among Israeli and Palestinian officials that Jewish or Palestinian extremists will use violence to try to disrupt Saturday's scheduled Palestinian elections. "We know that there are Hamas and Islamic Jihad squads still attempting to hit people and destroy the peace process," Prime Minister Shimon Peres told reporters in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

European observers on Monday blasted the Palestinian Authority for its handling of the campaign that is supposed to produce an elected self-governing authority for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "Enough is enough," said Carl Lidbom, head of the European Electoral Unit, in a statement that he faxed to reporters complaining about irregular election procedures. Lidbom's complaints were echoed by Kare Vollan, head of the Norwegian observer delegation.

Anis al Qaq, fresh-faced candidate for the Palestinian self-governing authority, listened empathetically Thursday to the frustrated would-be voter who buttonholed him during a campaign walkabout. "I don't know where to vote," the shopkeeper in the walled Old City complained. "I don't know where to vote either," Qaq admitted before rushing on to shake more hands.

In a peaceful display of national pride, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip turned out in large numbers on Saturday to vote in their first election for a self-rule government. But fear and anger kept many from polls that were guarded by Israeli soldiers in the contested cities of Jerusalem and Hebron.