"I'm under fire!"

Arafat, however, rejected the Israeli terms for letting him go, which included the possibility that Sharon would not let him back into the Palestinian territories if attacks took place during his absence. Right now it is hard to tell whether the Palestinian leader wagered correctly. Certainly a terrible suicide attack did take place, on the first night of the Jewish Passover, in the resort town of Netanya. But it could also be true that Palestinian anger over the Israeli failure to let Arafat leave and return contributed to the fury behind the wave of attacks.

Palestinian spokesmen not only blame Israel for keeping Arafat from Beirut, where the Saudi peace initiative was accepted anyway. They also see a bloody calculus behind the move, believing that a military attack is the standard Israeli response to any peace move from the Arab side. On the eve of the new incursion Thursday night, Arafat made a last-ditch statement in support of a cease-fire proposal. But for both the U.S. and Israel, this was way too little and way too late.

Although the Israelis have promised the U.S. that Arafat won't be harmed in the assault on his compound, the Palestinians insist harm is indeed the aim of the operation. "They want to kill, exile or capture me," Arafat said, shortly after the incursion on the Arab-language satellite-TV station Al-Jazeera. "They will have to kill me. I want to be a martyr in the Holy Land," said Mr. Arafat. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, he grew angry at questions about whether he would rein in Palestinian violence. "Are you asking me while I am under complete siege?" he retorted. When Amanpour pressed, he ended the conversation this way: "You have to be accurate when you are speaking with General Yasser Arafat. Be quiet! You are covering, with such questions, the terrorist activities of the Israeli occupation and the Israeli crimes. Be fair. Why do you make these certain mistakes? Thank you. Bye, bye."

Whatever the stated aim of the Israeli operation, Sharon's soldiers have steadily tightened the noose around Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians. The Israeli actions have been incremental, which has served to prepare international opinion for ever-tougher military assaults. In the beginning of the intifada, when Ehud Barak was still prime minister, Israeli missile attacks caused concern. Then it took incursions into Palestinian territory to cause an outcry; then came the reoccupation of Palestinian towns by Israeli troops, and eventually tanks surrounded Yasser Arafat's headquarters. Now Israeli soldiers sleep next door to him.

Sharon has never made a secret of his distaste for the Oslo peace accords, the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat. He would ideally like to get rid of the whole lot. The question is whether now the time has come for his endgame. To be fair, there are other impulses at work behind Israel's military action. The public clamors for decisive action and no government can let the recent huge attacks, emanating from a neighbor's territory, go unanswered. That would be fair enough, if this Israeli government had embarked sincerely on a parallel political track, along side its harsh military response.

Palestinians now talk of "a million martyrs" as a reaction to the Israeli attack on their leader. Although this can be mostly chalked up to rhetoric, even Israeli security sources admit they're concerned that so far, their ever more dramatic military action has failed to foil the Palestinian militants -- in fact, it seems to have created a huge reservoir of resentment from which new suicide bombers emerge, including a third female bomber on Friday.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, are strengthened in their resolve by the perception among militants that the horrific attacks on Israeli citizens are effective in advancing their cause. More than anything else, the current Israeli assault is meant to show them that they are wrong. Sharon, with his reputation for impetuous actions, has decided to make them cry uncle, before his own public does. In Friday's Jerusalem Post, Sharon rival and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel must seek "total military victory" against the Palestinians.

"There is only one option that is now available to Israel: to decisively win the war that has been forced upon us," wrote Netanyahu in an op-ed piece. "What is required of us today is not a willingness to clench our teeth and bear this ongoing violence. We must instead seek a total military victory against an implacable enemy that is waging a terrorist war against us ... The claim that we have tried all military means to end the terror is baseless. We have not even used a fraction of our military power, and the little we have used has not been directed at the right target, namely ending Arafat's regime."

Abu Sharif, who was terribly injured in an Israeli assassination attempt in Beirut in 1972, draws a parallel with another era. "This is different from Beirut 20 years ago when Sharon also besieged us. He recently said that he now regrets having let Arafat get away then. Now he wants to finish the job in Ramallah."

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