Some violence is not hidden

From CNN for November 1:

At least three people were killed and 35 others wounded in a suicide bombing at an open-air market in Tel Aviv Monday, Israeli police and ambulance services said.

Four of the wounded were seriously injured, police and ambulance officials said. ...

A short time later, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claimed responsibility for the attack, Palestinian sources said.

The sources said the bomber was a 16-year-old male from the Askar refugee camp near Nablus on the West Bank.

The official responses to the murders were what we have come to expect. Palestinian leaders, including chief negotiator Saeb Erakat, condemned the attack. He later said that Yasser Arafat had called from his hospital in Paris to register his own condemnation. Meanwhile,

Ariel Sharon said the attack proved there is no change in the Palestinian Authority. He said that until the PA carries out reforms to eradicate terror, Israel will continue its plan to pull Israeli troops and settlements out of Gaza and a small portion of the West Bank.

The special UN coordinator in the Middle East, Terje Rode Larsen, blasted not only the attack but the Palestinian Authority, saying it must "act without delay against those organizing and perpetrating terror and bring them to justice."

What continues to strike me about such statements is the underlying assumption, one for which, as far as I'm aware, no actual evidence has been offered: The PA as an organization or, more usually, Yasser Arafat as an individual, could stop all acts of violence and terrorism by simply snapping his fingers and saying "stop." While it's doubtless true that the PA has been sluggish about battling militants, figuring that the ongoing risk of attack is the only leverage it has, it's equally true that the idea Arafat could just order an end to them is a fantasy and always has been.

In fact, as I've noted before, Israeli officials are aware of the real limitations of the authority of the PA. Back in January, such an official told the Washington Post that

"You have to understand Palestinian political society today is a collection of a couple hundred independent entities," each with its own leader and local militia. "When a Palestinian prime minister is confirmed, practically it means nothing."

As I noted at the time, "an official of the Sharon government is saying there can be no settlement with Palestinians until they do what the same official in virtually the next breath says they can't." And those limitations are not just of the PA's own making. It was in February I quoted Zvi Bar'el, Middle East commentator of the Israeli daily Harretz, as saying

[i]n the past three years, Israel has played a double game: on the one hand, it has removed the PA from any position of power and decision making, destroyed its infrastructure of security and civilian control, reoccupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and blocked any attempt to advance a political process. On the other hand, Israel has continued to insist that the PA is exclusively responsible for everything that happens, has depicted it as a terrorist organization and has ruled out every official Palestinian representation.

So if it it's true that Israel has no "partner for peace," it's because the Sharon government wanted it that way.