By 2010, there will be more Arabs in the land covered by Israel and the occupied territories than there are Jews. If the land is not divided into two states, Israel will have become an apartheid nation, where a Jewish minority rules over an Arab majority. Taba cannot be offered as "proof" that Mr Arafat is inherently rejectionist. This might be the case; we just don't know, because Israeli leaders have not made him a credible offer without then storming off.But secondly, even if you give up on the idea of negotiating with Mr Arafat altogether, the alternative is to work with and encourage a moderate Palestinian leader who will marginalise him - Abu Mazen was the perfect candidate - and it is certain that no moderate is going to emerge in the wake of the murder or expulsion of Mr Arafat.All but the most far-right Israelis accept that a division of the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean must happen. Mr Arafat agreed to negotiate over this and make detailed counter-proposals, but Ehud Barak broke off negotiations.

Firstly, the famous "generous offers" made at Camp David and more importantly Taba, which Mr Arafat supposedly unreasonably snubbed, were far from generous. They left huge Israeli settlement blocks at the heart of a Palestinian "state". Only removing Mr Arafat will make negotiations possible, because he rejects every compromise deal.There are a number of problems with this argument. The Palestinian people can then hold him accountable themselves, which won't take long, given his blithering incompetence.Ah, even liberal Israelis object, but with Mr Arafat in charge, we will never get to a point where we can establish a Palestinian state.

The way to deal with Mr Arafat's human rights abuses is to establish a democratic Palestinian state, protected in its infancy by international troops to make sure Mr Arafat does not liquidate its democratic nature. Prisoners were suspended from ceilings, whipped [and] burned] ... Not only is there no judicial recourse, but their families were threatened when they protested loudly".Liberation from Israeli occupation into a Palestinian Arafatistan would be an improvement; but only a tiny one. Prisoners were tortured on a regular basis at Mr Arafat's command, Amnesty showed, and, as his Palestinian biographer, Said Aburishi, documents, "the methods used were among the cruellest in the world.

Mr Arafat squandered his very limited financial resources on creating a vast apparatus of oppression, including what Amnesty International estimated was "probably the highest police to population ratio in the whole world". When he became head of the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo accords, he proceeded to construct an old-fashioned tyranny on the model that has been crushing people across the Arab world for the past century. It will strengthen Palestinian identity to an intensity never known before, and it will harden the determination of many Palestinians to never compromise with Israel.The horrible joke is that Israel's aggression towards Mr Arafat has built up a dishonest, corrupt tyrant into a Palestinian national hero. Mr Arafat's greatest crimes have been against the Palestinians themselves. It will not enable the Israelis to play Gaza off against the West Bank, or to establish compliant local leaders who squabble amongst themselves. Italian national identity didn't exist until 1870; does that mean Italians were all impostors in 1890? Killing Mr Arafat will not cause Palestinian identity to revert to smaller, tribal nationalisms, as Sharonistas fantasise. Because there was no Palestinian state before the state of Israel was created (Palestine was divided between several powers), they claim that the Palestinians aren't really a people at all.