They cannot eliminate terrorism using ever-escalating force nor have they found a way of subduing the seething resentment of

They cannot eliminate terrorism using ever-escalating force; nor have they found a way of subduing the seething resentment of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.Sooner or later, there must be a return to the negotiating table. There is a blueprint for peace – the draft plan that came close to securing agreement in the last Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Egypt in January. This calls for an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state Neither the US nor the EU has the stomach to impose it. But they are trying to nudge the parties towards this solution.Yet little diplomatic movement seems possible until Sharon and Arafat are replaced. Each will probably give way to a leader from a new generation.

The most likely successor to Sharon is Netanyahu, who has made a comeback since his electoral defeat in 1999. The Israeli Labour Party is mired in internal conflict and seems incapable of producing any alternative candidate for leadership. The former foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, enjoys the advantages of Moroccan birth and an Oxford education. But he has been weakened by an ongoing inquiry into his ministerial responsibility for the shooting by Israeli police in October 2000 of 13 Israeli Arab demonstrators. He lacks support, but has ideas.Arafat has no obvious successor. Politicians such as Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), chief negotiator of the Oslo Agreement, have only a limited following. Marwan Barghouti, head of the Tanzim militia, has emerged as a popular figure: but he now fears that he is on the Israeli “targeted shooting” list for assassination.

The most probable replacement may be drawn from Arafat’s security chieftains. The two most prominent are the chief of preventive security in the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub, and the chief of Gaza preventative security and chief of the Palestinian intelligence service in the West Bank, Mohammed Dahlan.Rajoub is a loudmouth under whose authority torture of political detainees has become routine. Dahlan is a sure-footed operator who could become a formidable leader. For the Western powers the most attractive candidate would be someone such as Sari Nusseibeh, president of al-Quds University, who was nominated by Arafat to take charge of Jerusalem affairs in succession to the late Faisal Husseini. Nusseibeh has made statements urging an end to what he sees as futile violence and in favour of a settlement He has no broad political base. But like his fellow-Oxonian Ben-Ami, he has ideas of his own.How long will it be before this younger, more sophisticated political generation can seize the reins? It is impossible to say.

One thing is certain: nobody can impose new leaders on the Israelis or Palestinians They must make these choices themselves. Until they do so, there can be little prospect of an end to the agony of these two peoples.Bernard Wasserstein is the author of ‘Divided Jerusalem: the Struggle for the Holy City’, published by Profile Books. After confining Yasser Arafat to Ramallah with tanks in the streets and a blow-out of his helicopters, Israel tightened the thumbscrews on the Palestinian leader still further yesterday with missile strikes in the southern Gaza Strip. When the Israeli interviewer suggested the Americans regarded the arrests as a sham, Mr Arafat got agitated and began a diatribe about no pressure being put on Israel to punish soldiers who have killed or maimed thousands of unarmed Arab civilians, or violent Jewish settlers.”Who cares about the Americans?” said an annoyed Mr Arafat. “The Americans are on your side and they gave you everything Who gave you the planes? .. Who gave you the tanks? … Who gave you all the money?”The Palestinian and Israeli accounts of Friday night’s security meeting differ from the US version.