Mr. Pipes points out that despite the Palestinian Arabs' near unending cries and complaints about the "brutal", "vicious", etc., occupation by Israel, in quieter moments they are far more candid and forthcoming.

Several recurrent themes present themselves.

Restraints on violence. After PA police raided the house of a Hamas supporter in a late-night operation and roughed up both him and his 70-year-old father, the father yelled at the police, "Even the Jews did not behave like you cowards." When the son came out of the PA jail, he declared it as much worse than Israeli prisons. An opponent of Yasser Arafat noted that Israeli soldiers "would first fire tear gas, and then fire rubber bullets, and only then shoot live ammunition. ... But these Palestinian police started shooting immediately."

Rule of law. A Gazan leader, Haydar Abd ash-Shafi, once observed, "Can anyone imagine that a family would be happy to hear a knock at the door in the middle of the night from the Israeli Army?" He went on: "When the infighting began in Gaza, the people were happy because the Israeli Army imposed a curfew." Likewise, Musa Abu Marzouk of Hamas compared Arafat unfavorably with Jewish leaders: "We saw representatives of the Israeli opposition criticize [Prime Minister] Barak and they were not arrested ... but in our case the PA arrests people as the first order of business."

The two aforementioned items from the article point up some very obvious differences. The difference between how agencies of a democratic country, Israel, act and how the thugs of a kleptocracy behave.

Now let us move on to the issue of democracy.

Democracy. Israel's 1999 elections, in which the incumbent prime minister lost, impressed many Palestinian observers. Columnists remarked on the smooth transition in Israel and wanted the same for themselves: "I envy [the Israelis] and desire a similar regime in my future state." The director-general of the PA's Information Ministry, Hasan al-Kashif, contrasted the changes in Israel with the power of "several names in our leadership" who rule in seeming perpetuity. The leader of the terrorist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Nayif Hawatma, wants the PA to make decisions the way Israel does, by putting them to a vote.

Here again, Israel is the model of preference. Nothing beats being able to vote out your leaders from time to time as opposed to waiting for them to depart via the grim reaper.

The issue of minority rights is another strong suit in favor of Israel.

Minority rights. Christians and secular Muslims particularly appreciate Israel's protection at a time when Palestinian politics has taken an increasingly Islamist cast. A Palestinian Christian declared that when the Palestinian state comes into existence, "the sacred union against the Zionist enemy will die. It will be time to settle accounts. We will undergo the same as our Lebanese brothers or the Copts in Egypt. It saddens me to say so, but Israeli laws protect us."

As has been noted on more than one occasion. Every citizen of the State of Israel, whatever their persuasion, is afforded all the rights and privileges thereof without prejudice.

The freedom of speech, which we Americans and Israelis hold most dear, is apparently lacking in Palestinian society.

Freedom of expression. In an ironic turn of events, a lawyer living in Gaza, Na'im Salama, was arrested for slander by the PA when he wrote that Palestinians should adopt Israeli standards of democracy. For his audacity, he served jail time. An obsessive anti-Israel critic, Hanan Ashrawi, reluctantly acknowledges that the Jewish state has something to teach the nascent Palestinian polity: "freedom would have to be mentioned, although it has only been implemented in a selective way, for example, the freedom of speech." A prominent psychiatrist and director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Iyad as-Sarraj, confesses that "during the Israeli occupation, I was 100 times freer."

The social and financial benefits of living and working in Israel are manifest. This, in stark contrast to the abject state of societal and economic deprivation prevalent under Palestinian Authority rule.

Economic benefits. Palestinians who live in Israel, including Jerusalem, appreciate Israel's economic success, social services, and other benefits. Salaries in Israel are about five times higher than in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Israel's social security system has no parallel on the Palestinian side. Palestinians living outside of Israel want an economic in - when the Israeli government announced the completion of the security fence in one region, a resident of the West Bank border town of Qalqiliya reacted with outrage: "We are living in a big prison."

In the final assy it is made plain that those Palestinians wanting real and effectual change must make their voices heard above the din of those currently dominating the discussion. To wit, palestinian terrorists and terror groups.

These comments point to Palestinian appreciation for the benefits of elections, rule of law, minority rights, freedom of speech, and a higher standard of living. Amid all the PA's political extremism and terrorism, it is good to know that a Palestinian constituency also exists for normality.

Unfortunately, it remains a furtive constituency with little political sway. The time has come for decent Palestinians to make their voices heard and state that Israel's existence is not the problem but the solution.

As the previous examples delineate, Palestinians do not relish living under the fickle caprice of unelected and unrepresentative tyrants. They must, however, ultimately realize that they are already in possession of the necessary tools.

The palestinians must look to themselves for answers to the problems which vex them. Until such time they will never escape their present circumstance.