AS BOTH sides counted their dead, tended their wounded, and prepared for the prospect of still more bloodshed today, perhaps the saddest thing about this week's explosion of violence in Jerusalem, Bank and the Gaza Strip, was that it was all so predictable.
From the day that Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn into office here on June 18th, hopes for the success of that unlikely Rabin-Peres-Arafat effort to change Middle East history have slowly ebbed away.
The Clinton Administration tried to tell Mr Netanyahu that his obsession with security could not be pursued to the exclusion of peacemaking. But Mr Clinton has an election to fight, and could not risk alienating the Jewish vote by squeezing the Israeli Prime Minister too hard.
The Irish EU Presidency repeatedly urged Mr Netanyahu to move forward urgently with Mr Yasser Arafat, or risk the collapse of the entire process. To no avail. When did any Israeli leader pay much heed to voices from Europe?
The defeated Labour leader, Mr Shimon Peres, practically begged Mr Netanyahu to carry out the Israeli troop withdrawal from Hebron, as promised. But Mr Netanyahu had no time for a naive idealist who had been rejected by the Israeli electorate.
HIS government, the new Prime Minister declared almost daily, was doing things differently. Yes, it was going to advance the peace process, but on the basis of reciprocity. There would be no more one-sided concessions. The Palestinians would have to pull their weight too. That way, his way, Mr Netanyahu promised, Israel would achieve the magical "peace with security".
Mr Netanyahu certainly talks a good policy. He impressed Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak when they met a few weeks ago. He won over Jordan's King Hussein. They all emerged from their talks with the Prime Minister convinced that the first concrete moves forward were just around the corner.
He even, with a great show of distaste consented to meet Mr Arafat just three weeks ago - and left the Palestinian Authority President satisfied, certain the final hurdle to progress had now been cleared.
But on the ground, where it really matters, Mr Netanyahu has done nothing but exacerbate Palestinian frustration and foster a keen sense of betrayal. Six months after they were supposed to leave, Israeli soldiers are still deployed in Hebron. Few new permits have been issued for Palestinian workers to enter Israel. There have been no significant prisoner releases.
And yet Mr Netanyahu can hardly argue that the Palestinians were failing to keep their side of the deal. In the past six months, there have been no Islamic extremist suicide bombings against Israeli targets; but there have been numerous reports of such attacks being frustrated by Mr Arafat's forces.
As the stalemate continued, Israel's standing with all its neighbours friends and foes has plummeted. Syria is moving troops and hinting at war.
Is this all part of some grim Netanyahu master plan, or the sorry result of utter prime ministerial incompetence? Many Israelis, supporters and opponents alike, believe the former.
THEY theorise that Mr Netanyahu fundamentally mistrusts the Arabs, considers the idea of them honouring a peace treaty for any length of time absurd, and has therefore been bent on fomenting all-out violence as quickly as possible - so that the inevitable war is fought while Israel still controls as much territory as possible.
But tempting though it may be to believe such sinister thinking, bitter experience suggests that a more plausible explanation is sheer prime ministerial foolishness. Just as a few hostile and ill-considered remarks by Mr Netanyahu earlier this summer sent the Syrian army into a panic of mobilisation, so this week's appalling eruption of violence can be ascribed to a sorry mixture of haste and arrogance.
Had he chosen to examine the issue with sufficient care, or to listen to his intelligence chiefs, Mr Netanyahu would have known that the Jerusalem tunnel project that triggered the fighting has long been extraordinarily controversial, and would best be left alone.
But Mr Netanyahu was apparently fed-up with listening to warnings about inauspicious timing or Palestinian sensitivities. He approved the opening of a second entrance to the tunnel on Monday night, and flew to Europe - confident that any angry reaction would be swiftly repulsed.
Curiously, Yitzhak Rabin was out of the country nine years ago, when the Palestinian Intifada broke out after a road accident in Gaza. Mr Rabin thought those protests would die out quickly. They lasted for six years. And in those days, the Palestinians didn't have guns.
