...Abbas was lucky to lose only his job. At previous hinge points in Middle Eastern history, those advocating compromise and peace met a harsher fate. Jordan's King Abdullah, grandfather of King Hussein, was assassinated in 1951. Three months after Anwar Sadat addressed the Israeli Knesset, one of his top advisers, Youssef Sebai, editor of the al-Ahram newspaper, was assassinated in Cyprus. The moderate intellectual Issam Sartawi was assassinated in Portugal in 1983.

Abbas's fall is only the latest chapter in this tragic story of the Palestinians' repeated decision to refuse the dignity of independence if it meant accepting Israel. Every peace plan, every road map, every truce is bound to fail until the Palestinians make a historic collective decision to accept half a loaf and build their state within it.

What should the United States do now? The editorialists are issuing the usual knee-jerk call for the Bush administration to intensify its efforts in the peace process.

What peace process? Intensify efforts with whom? With Arafat — who is behind the terror, who destroyed Abbas, who will never sign a peace treaty and whose commitment to war-until-victory is as enduring as was Ho Chi Minh's and Mao Zedong's?

The United States went a very long way toward the Palestinians by issuing the road map and the guarantee of statehood if they dismantled the terror apparatus, stopped the murderous incitement and began the process of reconciliation. Abbas appeared ready to take that road. Which is why Arafat brought him down.

The fundamental principle of U.S. policy now must be to prove that Abbas was right. That means no negotiations with Arafat or with any new prime minister beholden to him. That means supporting Israel in its war on terror. And that means not only supporting military responses to atrocities such as the double suicide bombings on Tuesday — responses such as the expulsion of Arafat — it also means reconsidering the administration's puzzling opposition to the Israeli security fence...