(October 12) The Oslo process was killed neither by a Jewish assassin nor an Islamist fanatic, but by one of its very godfathers, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has now convinced moderate Israelis that he is a pathological liar, coward, charlatan and an unreconstructed rabble-rousing Third World revolutionary; an impostor for whom basic political values like justice, freedom and prosperity are trivialities at best, anathema at worst.

Those of us who by and large supported the Oslo process through thick and thin do not regret having done so. We would never have forgiven ourselves for having failed to explore the opportunity that has now proven a chimera.

Yet now that its collapse is as unequivocal, resounding and shocking as the ransacking of Joseph's Tomb, it is time to brace for war. For decades we, the Israelis who supported painful peace compromises were asked what, if anything, we would fight for. The best answer was offered by author Amos Oz, who once said he would kill for only two values: life and freedom. After the past two weeks a vast majority of Israelis - including moderate commentators like Ehud Ya'ari, Ze'ev Schiff, Yoel Marcus, Doron Rosenblum, Amnon Abramowitz and Nahum Barnea, and pro-Oslo politicians like Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, Shinui leader Yosef Lapid and Communications Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer - increasingly concede it has indeed come down to that. A genuine peace negotiator cannot set the region ablaze just because this or that demand wasn't met; he certainly cannot claim Judaism's holiest site isn't where the whole damn world knows it is.

In hindsight we can say that this last performance of his was but the culmination of a dismal seven-year record on everything that should have been prerequisite for peace. Arafat spoke to his people emphatically about suicide bombers; he taught hatred, bigotry and antisemitism to school children; he had his press, radio and TV incite against his ostensible peace partner; and he actively deflected Western efforts to invest in his realm, thereby preventing the creation of serious employment opportunities.

THE EMPLOYMENT case is perhaps the most tragic. The world's rich countries were eager to finance a $1 billion project to build seven industrial parks throughout the PA. The vision was for those parks to employ Palestinians, and that even when Israeli capital would be involved, the employees' experience would be devoid of the kind of first-hand friction with Israeli bosses and patrons which for decades has been poisoning Israeli-Palestinian relations. Seven years later, all that has actually materialized in this regard is the Karni Park, a drop in the bucket that has left at least a third of the PA's workforce jobless, and thousands of able-bodied men both psychologically charged and readily available to engage in the kind of futile rioting for which Arafat habitually mobilizes them.

The tale of the industrial parks is much more telling than people realize. Arafat stubbornly refused to meet Western governments' demands for basic cash-flow transparency norms. Evidently, he had a problem with the funds being used directly for the betterment of his impoverished population's lot, and he had no problem raising suspicions that, if only allowed, he would abuse those funds in a way that would make their donors withdraw them. This, coupled with Arafat's infamous record on human rights and freedom of speech, makes one wonder how a Western world that so persistently stood up to tyranny in the former East Bloc now silently accepts it not only in the PA, but across the Middle East.

THIS PARADOX is at the crux of Oslo's failure, in the same way that it sheds light on Egypt's stubborn refusal to pour more content into its peace with the Jewish state. Full peace means exposure to the intoxicating air of freedom, justice and mobility with which Israel, like the rest of the West, is laden.

And that, more than anything else, is what makes us so threatening to the Arab regimes. We pose a threat neither to their moral values nor to their populations' existence, but simply to their aloof elites' grip on leadership. That is also why a dictator like Arafat can't afford to strike a deal that would include a clause about ending the conflict. That is also why just when a deal including such a clause seemed imminent, Arafat unleashed the kind of violence he just has, even after Israel had agreed to divide Jerusalem, share the Temple Mount and admit thousands of refugees.

And that is also why we here now realize that the time has come to fight. The current lull in fighting can no longer fool us Israelis, who are waking up from a peace fantasy led by the man who failed to renounce violence even at the famous handshake ceremony in '93, and who wouldn't set aside his pistol when entering the White House.

We know that soon enough there will be terror attacks inside our cities perpetrated by the Hamas murderers he has just unleashed. And when they strike, we should strike back, and with vengeance, at the heart of his regime and its cities.

e Jews didn't build this country in order to be slaughtered in it, and when it comes down to that, the last thing we should care about is the enlightened world's cynical reprimands. If he were a serious man, French President Jacques Chirac would ask himself what he would do if, say, thousands of Corsicans had stormed French police in Paris, Marseilles and Bordeaux with live ammunition, and stoned to death innocent drivers on the major highways. Whether or not the French president and his ilk are serious about justice here, we are dead serious about our survival and freedom in the Middle East.