"If the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is waging what may prove to be a literal form of character assassination in its unrelenting verbal onslaught against Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, it has little reason to believe that a post-Arafat Authority would be any more skilled at quelling the chaos that is pre-state Palestine", wrote Mr. Bradley Burston in the liberal daily Ha’aretz.

Here are excerpts of his article as published by the daily in its 10 December issue:

Israeli hardliners - who have debated for weeks whether Arafat should be toppled or "terminated" - took little-disguised satisfaction this week in Arafat's haggard appearance in a rare interview with state-run Channel One Television.

Israeli officials, for their part, took no little pleasure in the conspicuous lack of international criticism for having kept Arafat from the Qatar gathering, and from the fact that a worried Egypt emerged from a diplomatic freeze-out to dispatch its foreign minister for a truce mission last week. Israel has also gone largely uncriticised for its repeated pledges to continue to assassinate militants - even launching a killing Monday while Sharon sought to persuade Zinni to forego a threat to curtail his truce mission for lack of constructive action by the sides.

Capping this, in official eyes, was a swelling chorus of voices from abroad pressing Arafat to crack the whip on militant violence.

Commented a despairing Zoheir Andreos, editor of the Palestinian newspaper "Kol al-Arab": "We've reached the point that every leader in the world located near a passing microphone, attacks Arafat. [Dick] Cheney, [George] Bush's vice-president, calls him a terrorist, [Secretary of State Colin] Powell ditto. Bloomberg, the New York mayor has not even taken office and he's already saying Arafat's the same as Ben Laden. And Sharon, the erstwhile "peace-lover", says Arafat is scared to go to the Islamic nations conference for fear that Sharon won't allow him to return."

In a remarkable article titled "Go home, Yasser" and published Monday in "Ma'ariv" daily, Andreos wrote that Arafat should step down now, with the Palestinian people were united behind him, as a national hero, rather than continuing to suffer unending humiliation:

Sharon has often publicly ruled out an order to add Arafat to Israel's hit list. But offhand comments have hinted that the Prime Minister would like nothing better than to be rid of his long-time arch-foe, politically if not permanently.

According to Ha'aretz commentator Danny Rubinstein, even if Arafat's days at the helm of the Palestinian Authority may be numbered, there is no reason for Israel to believe that the Palestinian administration to follow will be any less chaotic than the chairman's often erratic reign.

Rubinstein writes in Monday's paper that "sometime in the future, a research study will likely come to the conclusion that one of the primary reasons for the collapse of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians was the chronic and utter havoc that reigned supreme in the Palestinian regime."