As Israeli soldiers and policemen do the draining and difficult work of pulling their fellow Jews out of their homes in Gaza, the Palestinian Arabs and their European, Saudi, and Iranian henchmen are already plotting Israel’s next retreat. “Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem,” say the signs funded by the United Nations. That contravenes American law and Israeli policy that Jerusalem will be an undivided city and the capital of Israel. But it also misses the point by focusing on territorial concessions by Israel rather than the more significant issue of the nature of the Palestinian Arab territories, now teeming with armed gangs of thugs and terrorists and with corrupt longtime aides to Yasser Arafat.

The question is not “what piece of land will Israel give up next?” The question – or questions – are those such as, What relation will Nablus and Jenin and Ramallah have with the Jordanian kingdom? And what relation will Gaza have with Egypt, and with the West Bank? Will there be rule of law or a free press in either part of the Palestinian Authority, the Gaza part or the West Bank part? Will terrorist attacks against Israel emanate from the West Bank or from Gaza after the withdrawal?

America can play a constructive role after Israel leaves Gaza by avoiding the error the Clinton administration made of investing all its capital in one Arab strongman. The problem wasn’t merely that the Clinton administration picked the wrong strongman in Yasser Arafat, who was both a terrorist and corrupt. The problem was the strongman strategy itself. Mahmoud Abbas or any other longtime Arafat aide is not “the answer.”

The answer is going to have to come from mosques and schools that don’t preach hate, from independent Palestinian Arab newspapers and radio stations that don’t preach hate, from Palestinian Arab courts that are impartial and fair. It is going to have to come from neighboring Arab states like Jordan and Egypt making their own strides toward freedom and democracy and only then playing a constructive role with the West Bank and Gaza, respectively. Under any solution, Israel will have to have defensible borders.

This kind of progress is difficult, but President Bush has set it forth as policy. He said a week ago today, “I’ve got great optimism about the spread of freedom because I believe deep in everybody’s soul is the desire to be free, and I know that history has shown that peaceful societies are those that are free, that democratic neighbors don’t war, that democracies promote peace.” The challenge for Washington to focus on in the coming months and years will not be to wrest more territorial concessions out of Israel, but to wrest a free and democratic society out of the Palestinian Arabs.