But the failure of the PA to launch a more politically sophisticated confrontation with Mr Netanyahu earlier in the year opened a political vacuum that is now being filled by suicide bombers from Hamas.There is no doubt that the bombing is supported by a large section of the 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Mr Netanyahu says the Palestinians are trying to throw the Israelis into the sea. The Palestinians retort that the Israelis have been rather more successful in throwing them into the desert. His spokesmen are arrogant, ignorant and incompetent.Israelis and Palestinians alike make great efforts to portray themselves as victims. Disillusionment with the Palestinian Authority was too great to allow popular mobilisation.

Much of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fought out at the level of an information war Mr Arafat has always been peculiarly inept at waging this. His administration is like a medieval court, with all decisions and appointments dependent on his whim. On the contrary it would have been much in the Palestinian interest to mount confrontations with settlers and the Israeli army in every village and settlement along the lines of the Intifada of 1987-92. If there was to be killing they could have let it come from the other sideThis did not happen because Mr Arafat’s organisation, although ramshackle, is jealous of anybody acting without orders. But confrontation did not necessarily mean that there would be a return of the suicide bomber. The Palestinians had too little authority to consolidate and what they had was being nibbled away at the edges by Mr Netanyahu. The election of Mr Netanyahu, and of an Israeli parliament opposed to Oslo, probably made a renewed confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians inevitable.

Even the exam papers were confiscated by Preventive Security agents.The corruption and brutality have important political consequences. Dr Fathi Subuh, a professor at al-Azhar university, is still in jail after setting an exam paper for his students which asked them about corruption in Mr Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. He disregards the fledgling Palestinian judiciary and legislature and tolerates high levels of corruption.In the impoverished enclave of Gaza, local Palestinians notice that Mohammed Dahlan, the head of the Preventive Security police agency, is building himself a fine mansion overlooking the sea. Mr Arafat runs it in the same authoritarian way as he had the Palestinian- controlled areas in Lebanon before the Israeli invasion of 1982 He delegates power to some 11 security services.