Reuven Koret is publisher of israelinsider and CEO of Koret Communications.
More from Reuven Koret
	Dealing with the devil
	A plea for forgiveness
	A caution before the crusade
	Time to face Mecca
	What the world can learn from Israel
	Israel should be grateful for Durban
	Do good fences really make good neighbors?
	Sexual fantasies of a suicide bomber
	"Swordfish" and Israeli anti-terrorist policy
	Before the boom
	Old enough for a new gas mask
	Renaming for peace
	Israeli airspace: Who's flying, who's not
	Before the storm
	Avoiding future catastrophes
	Facing the faceless enemy
	A tale of two doormats
	Replacing Humpty Dumpty
	Israeli flag flies over Orient House after takeover by police, special forces
	About Orient House

They were to be disappointed. The F-16 missile attack on the golden-domed PA police station in Ramallah at 1:30am, long after it had been evacuated, was just a red herring, a distraction from the maneuver that Israeli forces were executing at that moment. Perhaps, too, the target selection had something to do with the parade in Ramallah celebrating the killing of Israelis in the bombing, including the participation of Palestinian police.

With the Palestinians taking cover, Israel, in a casualty-free lightning strike, used the cover of darkness to change the balance of power in Jerusalem overnight.

Abu Dis is a village overlooking eastern Jerusalem. In the mid-90s, former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin and PA official Abu Mazen had agreed that Abu Dis would be the capital of Palestine, euphemistically called Al-Quds so Israelis could claim that they hadn't divided their capital city. Arafat rejected the offer. He hoped he could do better.

A year ago, at Camp David, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was willing to yield Israeli sovereignty over the eastern half of Jerusalem, and to yield Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Arafat rejected the offer. He thought he could do better.

By the time President Clinton was ready to leave office, and Barak was prepared to do just about anything to get a peace deal and get re-elected, he went much farther. The Palestinians demanded exclusive control over the Temple Mount, and over the entire Old City. Barak and his minister were prepared to do that, except for the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter. Arafat rejected the offer. By then, he knew he could do better.

Led by Faisal al-Husseini, Palestinian Minister for Jerusalem affairs, the Palestinians began preparing claims on properties in Western Jerusalem.

When al-Husseini, owner and master of Orient House, died in Kuwait the night before the Tel Aviv discothèque bombing, thousands of Palestinians paraded through Jerusalem to this symbol of PLO control, cheering the bombing, taunting Israeli police, and damaging Israeli property. As Jews buried their dead in Tel Aviv, the streets of Jerusalem belonged to them. They believed that it was just a matter of time before the city, at least the eastern half for starters, followed.

Today Orient House, Abu Dis, and other symbols of Palestinian control over Jerusalem are in Israeli hands. Asked how long the conquered territories would stay in Israeli hands, Prime Minister Sharon answered "forever." But Israel will be under terrific pressure to hand it back to the Palestinians.

We should not hurry to do so. As long as the Palestinians fail to carry out there commitments to fight terror, the vast concessions Israel made to them should be rendered null and void. If they cannot control terror, they will lose control over territory.

In Faisal Al-Husseini's last interview, he compared the Oslo Accords with a Trojan Horse, used by the ancient Greeks to capture the city of Troy. "Had the U.S. and Israel not realized, before Oslo, that all that was left of the Palestinian National movement and the Pan-Arab movement was a wooden horse called Arafat or the PLO, they would never have opened their fortified gates and let it inside their walls."

In Al-Husseini's view, all Palestinians joined the newly formed Palestinian Authority within the territories via the accords, whether they supported Oslo or not. Now the imperative, he believed, was to go out and conquer territory: "So come down out of the horse and start working for the goal for which you entered the horse to begin with. In my opinion, the Intifada itself is the coming down out of the horse."

With the outbreak of the Intifada, the Palestinians could leave the shell of the Oslo accords behind, and begin working for their final goal. Al-Husseini's greatest fear was that "while advancing towards my short-term goal I might turn my back on my long-term goal, which is the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea...."

Most Israelis now grasp this Palestinian strategy. Oslo represented a series of salami tactics, with Arafat implementing the officially approved "phased plan" for the liberation of Palestine. Terrorism was an essential component of the plan, intimidating and tricking Israelis into believing that Arafat was the only counter-force to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

But with Arafat violating the fundamental obligations he assumed in Oslo, and his own forces claiming credit for terror acts, many Israeli recognize that Arafat is no longer to be believed, or relied upon. Oslo is perceived as hollow -- indeed, a dead horse that served only as a vehicle for allowing the enemy to penetrate our borders and sow death.

Orient House is the physical symbol of that duplicity. Foreign officials and journalists, Israeli diplomats and peace activists - all were privileged over the years to meet there with Palestinian spokesmen, from there dispersing the lies and propaganda designed to facilitate the realization of the dream expressed by al-Husseini and still embodied in the never-abandoned PLO Charter: Palestine from the river to the sea. Israel in the latter.

Now more and more Israelis understand that the only language Arafat understands is force: the imperative of self-preservation, which is ultimately his greatest concern. He must learn that the salami knife cuts both ways. Each time he fails to cut the power of the terrorists, Israel should cut off a piece of the territory that he thought he controlled. It is a policy that we have the power to implement. It is a war, imposed on us, that we can win.

The first move in this new Israeli policy was made in the long-overdue capture of Orient House and Abu Dis. The time has now come to evict the Trojan Horse of the Oslo Accords, and the terrorist forces it harbored, from within the gates of our capital city, and the borders of our nation. Never has the beating of a dead horse been more imperative.

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