Yasser Arafat is destined for the history books as the man who squandered Palestine. And far from being the passing conventional wisdom of the day, the viewpoint that a Palestinian nation was fumbled not for principle but for Arafat's refusal to be a serious leader is growing more permanent with each moment that Arafat and the Palestinian Authority punt on the tough choices. It is disheartening to realize now that the faith placed in Arafat and the patience shown him by the international community have amounted to little and that we are closer to permanently writing Arafat off than redeeming him.

Still, in all likelihood, there will be a Palestinian state. It will consist of the Gaza Strip and a majority of the land of the West Bank. It will happen when Palestinians realize that the State of Israel is a permanent and just fixture in the Middle East and the world, that it will hold Jerusalem as its capital, and that it has earned these rights not simply through military force but by historic reality and embracing the ideals of democracy and plurality that create open, prosperous, and stable nations.

Whether Yasser Arafat and the PLO play a role in this state remains to be seen, depending solely on their willingness to fight extremism within their own community and declare unequivocally their siding with the West against Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist forces in the Middle East.

Until this moment of clarity dawns upon the Palestinian people, though, talk of a Palestinian nation is dead in the water. The Bush administration's forward leaning policy pronouncements on supporting Palestinian statehood and open reference to Palestine while addressing the United Nations are now all past tense as the president and his team find themselves backtracking away from Arafat and with little choice but to be at least sympathetic to Israel's own war against terrorism that may now include Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

The painful, uncomfortable truth is that Arafat has been playing both sides for years. In English he is a willing partner in peace, a statesman protecting his people and hoping to end bloodshed; but when speaking to Arab audiences, Arafat is the pistol-wearing guerrilla of old, filled with venom for Israel and fuelling the worst of Palestinian blood libel against the Jewish state. When the cameras are on, Arafat is saddened and bewildered by the terror committed in his people's name - whether a suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv disco or Jerusalem pizzeria, or the Sept. 11 attack on US targets - but he seems quite unwilling, privately, to choke off the Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Fatah Hawk terrorists who work within Palestinian-controlled land, and he praises suicide attacks as a heroic deed to turn one's body into a bomb. The same Arafat who paid a shiva call to Yitzhak Rabin's widow after his assassination by extremist Jews also lets Palestinian university students build shrines celebrating suicide bombings in Jerusalem, threatens international news organizations that report Palestinian revelry after the Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, and within three weeks of the terror attacks issued a joint statement with Hamas calling for (continued) intifada and resistance to Israel.

In short, statehood would reward someone who has yet to demonstrate absolute, genuine, lasting, eager, and public commitments to peace, tolerance, and compromise.

The Palestinian arguments are well known. They have publicly accepted Israel and seek only to return to their own land and to regain Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. But the Middle East is littered with empty words and gestures - on all sides - and the only currency in pursuit of peace and statehood are deeds and action. When, in early August, the Palestinian Authority invited Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian Liberation Front-Abu Abbas Faction, Abu Nidal and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command - all designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the United States - to potentially join the Palestinian government, it spoke volumes about vacuous entreaties to peace.

When Arafat ignores intelligence about coming terror attacks aimed at Israel or turns the arrest and detention of terrorists into no more than a 72-hour inconvenience - which has become the Palestinian Authority's standard procedure - he forfeits all credibility as a peace partner and responsible leader. And when an Israeli demand for seven consecutive days of peace before serious negotiations can begin - a week without suicide attacks, car bombs, or snipers targeting Jewish citizens - is dismissed by the Palestinian Authority with some weak equivocation about Israeli troops remaining in areas vital to the nation's security, as if soldiers at checkpoints and confrontations with bombers at work share any parallel with Palestinians blowing up 15-year-old girls or shooting commuters on buses, it is clear evidence that Arafat and his advisers remain hostage to propaganda rather than determined peacemakers.

Thankfully the White House has shifted gear from calling for and recognizing a Palestinian state to understanding that statehood comes as a follow-on to calm in the streets, open acceptance of Israeli security rights, and a real peace. If the events of the past three months have taught the United States anything it should be that cutting short-term deals - in this case Palestinian statehood to demonstrate US bona fides to the Arab world - does little long-term good. In 1991 we embraced Syria as part of an anti-Saddam Hussein coalition; earlier this year Syria hosted a gathering of radical Palestinian groups who agreed to resist and undo any peace agreement with Israel. In the 1980s we supplied Saddam Hussein's military for the nation's war against Iran, only to see him first invade Kuwait and later use his army to crush a post-Gulf War, US-encouraged uprising. And between 1979 and 1989 we armed a ragtag group of Muslim mujahideen, successfully liberating Afghanistan and accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union, only to agree to disengage from Afghanistan to appease the Soviets and in the process loose the chaotic, ignorant forces that birthed Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. Deals of convenience have an alarming way of coming back to haunt us - in intelligence circles it's called blowback - and supporting the creation of a Palestinian state under current circumstances falls squarely into this category.

That said, Israel is not without fault and should not consider its moral high ground all that lofty. For starters, building and expanding settlements in the West Bank even while claiming to want a peace agreement with the Palestinians is disingenuous and unhelpful - the criticism of Yasser Arafat playing two sides of the same coin should come to mind. Using US-supplied F-16 jets and artillery to respond to bombings and snipers seems disproportionate, and surely the Israeli Defense Force has tactics that are effective without being politically inflammatory. Though not completely responsible for current violence, Ariel Sharon's visit last year to the Temple Mount area housing the Dome of the Rock has to be one of the more ill-advised and boneheadedly self-centered political acts of modern times, the equivalent of putting out a fire with gasoline. The general failure of peace negotiations resides with many players, and Israel should accept its share of responsibility, though multiple suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa during the past weeks surely obscures any wider failures.

Worth remembering is that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak placed on the table at Wye Plantation last year a plan that would have given Palestinians the Gaza Strip, almost total control over the West Bank, territorial concessions to connect the two areas, a reasonable role in the life of Jerusalem, and unquestioned statehood. Arafat wanted more, suddenly making the return of thousands, perhaps millions, of Palestinians to Israel-proper his ''ne plus ultra.'' It finally dawned on Barak that, for Arafat, Israeli concessions would never be enough and, in fact, what the Palestinian chairman was aiming for was a way to diplomatically or militarily weaken the Jewish state's security and viability.

Since then, Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have done little to reestablish their place as partners in a peace process, and the State Department's PLO Commitments Compliance Act Report now finds the PLO failed to call consistently on Palestinians to refrain from violence and did not make an effort to discipline Palestinian Authority or PLO officials who instigated or engaged in violence.

At a time when the United States is asking nations around the world to be principled and to take a stand against terrorism in their midst, Arafat has continued to pursue the path of least resistance, avoiding hard choices and confrontations that would necessitate taking Hamas and Islamic Jihad head on.

Ten years ago, Arafat may have chosen the political course to statehood, but he has lacked either the sincerity or will to hew to it and by avoiding tough decisions he has imperiled his people's hope for nationhood. The path is still open to the Palestinians - when Hamas and Islamic Jihad are completely shut down, from their militant operations to the clinics and charities used for political cover, when peace and coexistence are pledged in both English and Arabic, and when Israel is assured it has a partner and not a modern-day Trojan horse to share a border with - but following it may come without Arafat. Having lost five wars and been propagandized throughout the Middle East, the Palestinian people now have to commit to a homeland that coexists with Israel as their ultimate goal and then voice that ideal above all other calls for violence, obstinacy, or delay.

The good news for Arafat and the Palestinians, who now risk a Hamas-led rebellion within their own ranks, is that the current state of world affairs offers them a real opportunity. A series of steps from a firm cease-fire, dialogue with Israel, the decapitation of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorists, demonstrable support for the antiterrorism coalition closing in on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, and the Arab world's acceptance of Israel's legitimacy will put a Palestinian homeland at the top of the international community's priorities. Then the Bush administration, the United Nations, the European Union, and the world in general can dust off a plan for Palestinian statehood. But not until then.