When Hanadi Darajat entered Maxim's restaurant in Haifa, her mission was clear: unlike other suicide bombers who killed Jews for the promise of the martyr's glory in Allah's kingdom, Hanadi's was to exact revenge for the assassination of cousins Fardi and Salah Darajat in Jenin in the occupied West Bank by Israeli undercover special forces.

Hanadi, 28, a neophyte lawyer was the sixth female Palestinian suicide bomber. She murdered 19 civilians, including five Israeli Arabs, who were celebrating the Jewish New Year.

The restaurant, jointly owned for 40 years by the Matars (Arabs) and the Tayyars (Jews) had long enjoyed the patronage of Arab and Jewish clientele. Israel immediately destroyed Hanadi's family home.

Meanwhile, Islamic Jihad, with connections to the Palestinian Authority's chairperson Yasser Arafat and his political organisation, Al Fatah, continued to actively recruit more ' shaheed ' martyrs from within female colleges and universities.

Previous female suicide bombers were linked to Fatah. At the same time, Fardi's poster picture began appearing on Jenin's city crumbling walls, commemorating him as a martyr for the Palestinian cause.

The cycle of violence breeding violence is all too familiar. Jenin, a city decimated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and occupied by Israel's army, nearly equates with the ruins of World War Two blitzkriegs.

But Jenin is dead. Ringed by heavily armed Israeli checkpoints, the local economy has been strategically suffocated of life. The dusty, rubble streets are bathed in the blood of the dead. Lying amidst Jenin's ruins is the Bush administration's Middle East Peace Roadmap also dead.

Arafat's failure

The orgy of bloody murder now looks unstoppable. Much of it comes in waves from inside the PA. But despite the economy being reduced to rubble, like its infrastructure, terrorists still thrive. They rise from within the walls of the dead city thanks to Arafat and his control of the security forces.

Arafat has promised much since taking the PA's helm in 1994. As one of the preconditions for peace talks between Israel and the PA, he promised to choke out the Palestinian terrorists. So far Arafat has failed miserably. But the problem is his reluctance to act against the Islamic fascists.

The latest Israeli attack on the Ein Saheb camp inside Syria is no surprise. A few weeks ago, Israeli fighter-jets screamed out of blue-skies and roared low over Syrian president Bashar Assad as he holidayed at the family property in the port city of Latakia.

It was a telltale sign: Israel was fast losing patience with the pussyfooting Syrian leadership for harbouring and financing terrorists. Camps like these in Syria, southern Lebanon, Egypt and Iran have long been the supply routes for cash, weapons and murderous terrorists.

There are at least two reasons for Arafat's wretched leadership woes. Although in charge of the political wing of Fatah a movement Arafat claims is secular it is barely a cohesive unit. Splinter groups long emerged to undermine his weakening leadership.

They've taken a bloodier approach to settling old scores with an occupying Israeli army by teaming up with Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Hezbollah organisations that seek not to drive out Israelis from the West Bank and Gaza but to wipe out the entire Jewish nation in a historical mission in the name of Allah and Islam.

Arafat has refused to divest political power concentrated in his hands to a government of Palestinians for Palestinians. The greatest sore point is the struggle over the home security portfolio, which Arafat controls, for his maintaining links with terrorists and murderous.

Two-faced regimes

And from where do these groups, and Arafat, get their 'moral' succour? From the Arab states that have always been quick to condemn Israeli aggression. They were even bold enough to condemn Saddam Hussein but always hid behind United States military cover when doing so.

Yet they would never denounce the bloodthirsty Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the militant Fatah wing. Why?

Mostly because these brutal and tyrannical regimes, like Arafat's, have backed themselves into a corner. To condemn fascist Islamism against the murder of Israelis will only invite violent backlashes from virulent radicalised Islamic groups inside their own borders. Moreover, the terrorist organisations are contemptuous of the corrupt monarchies. The only reason these two-faced regimes exist is because of US protection.

But all this could soon change. US Middle East policy is seriously disintegrating. Washington is in damage control and very possibly already working on an exit strategy. It'll run from Iraq like it ran from Vietnam.

US generals will no longer provide Washington's spin to the media on the crumbling management of postwar Iraq (and Afghanistan). That's now being left to right wing 'neocons' like Bush himself, who'll organically stuff it up since he can't even tell his right hand from his left.

Even Vice-President Dick Cheney, whose ex-Halliburton company and its subsidiaries have been the clear beneficiaries of George Bush's postwar Iraq multi-billion dollar reconstruction project, will also lead the new spin.

But double-speaking Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, has had a major fall out with Secretary of State Colin Powell. And Rumsfeld's been told by Bush, via National Security Adviser Condaleesa Rice, in a memo, to stop his banal press conferences.

But banalities soar from Washington to the Arabs. Still, all these pressures, including next year's US presidential elections, will see Washington take its eyes off the Peace Roadmap ball more and more.

Pre-emptive strike

Israel senses this and is taking steps to deal with Palestinian and other terrorists in ways that it sees fit to defend its nation. Nothing wrong with that since any nation, including Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim state, says it'll defend its sovereignty against any pre-emptive strike by more powerful nations.

The attack on the Ein Saheb camp inside Syria was just that, a pre-emptive strike, against terrorists. It's a signal to certain Arab states, including the PA and Arafat, to either quickly shut down the camps and haul in the terrorists or face the wrath of an Israeli military onslaught. And let no one doubt the awesome firepower that Israel possesses, or its resolve to use it if it must.

Nothing wrong either if part of Israel's preemptive strike is also directly applied to the menace mainly responsible for allowing the ongoing murder to be launched from inside the PA's jurisdiction.

Little surprise, then, that Tel Aviv made it clear weeks ago that among its policy objectives is the ejection of Arafat or his elimination. Thing is, it should have happened much earlier. Arafat is in his ninth life now.

The attack on the Ein Saheb camp was, by most reckoning, a second-best option; the first was to blow Arafat right out of his compound in Ramalah. Only the peace activists who had surrounded his ruined complex saved Arafat's neck this time.

Arafat must go. His leadership of the PA is a spectacular failure. Palestinians cannot and should not count on his rhetoric. His decision-making capacity vacillates, hopelessly. But he's not uncertain when it comes to cementing his political position and popularity.

However, with two utterly failed cabinets already, and a personal popularity that only rises in hot flushes, Arafat isn't much of a leader. His intransigence over home security having now passed it over to Nasser Yousef, a long time Arafat loyalist, but probably only a cosmetic move is more damning for long-term peace prospects.

He hasn't the gall or the moral authority anymore to control the militant Fatah wing, Hamas (which at times also accords him personal protection), Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. Getting rid of Arafat, voluntarily through an internal popular revolt, or by military force, can only be good for a negotiated peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and for the creation of a genuine Palestinian state sooner rather than later.

And once Arafat goes, so should Israel's most destructive, hawkish and murderous prime minister.

MANJIT BHATIA is managing director of AsiaRisk - a political and economic research and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. The writer specialises in international economics and politics and the Asia-Pacific region.