Spare us the righteous tears at the death of another monster

Dr Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who replaced the recently assassinated Hamas leader, Sheikh Yassin, had been at his post less than a month before Israel's targeted killing removed him on Saturday. A month is scarcely enough time to follow up on your initial meet-and-greet, but Rantissi got a few projects off the ground anyway.

On the very morning of his death, a Hamas suicide mission killed an Israeli border guard at the Erez Crossing in an industrial area where Palestinians cross to work alongside Israelis. Had he lived, Rantissi would have kept the Israeli body count high.

Targeted killings are counter-terrorism and as such they are not an activity any civilised human being can relish. Still, there is a moral distinction between counter-terrorism and terrorism, best described as the distinction between acts of war and war crimes. A further distinction on grounds of utility can be made: the targeted killings ordered by Israeli prime minister Golda Meir after "Fedayeen" terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics eliminated eight Arab operatives of varying importance but not the masterminds behind them. The deaths of Yassin and Rantissi, on the other hand, were a blow to the brains of the West Bank Hamas operation.

Yassin, bizarrely described by Westerners as the "spiritual leader" of Hamas, certainly embodied the spirit of Hamas: he called on all Muslims to kill Westerners "everywhere", declared that Israel would disappear by 2027, and forbade any peace initiative or dialogue with Israel. He was successful. Between December 2003 and January 2004, the Egyptian government convened three meetings with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to discuss a suspension of violence as a prelude to peace negotiations. Hamas refused any ceasefire. The talks failed.

Moral indignation over the deaths of Yassin and Rantissi remains impossible to fathom. One would be relieved if the Independent or Robin Cook were shedding crocodile tears but their weeping seems perfectly sincere. The existence of monsters such as Yassin and Rantissi only forces more civilised people into measures that spill blood on decent hands. That is a tragedy indeed, but that is about all one can mourn. Trying to serve a judicial warrant on Hamas leaders, deliberately living among the civilian population, would cause scores more innocent deaths than targeting them from a helicopter. None of us likes "extra-judicial" measures, but it is hypocrisy laid on with a trowel to suggest that psychotic beings such as Yassin and Rantissi are anything other than murderers in cold blood.

The Palestinian cause is an honourable one, but Hamas and similar groups, such as Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad or Arafat's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, have no interest in an honourable two-state solution. Apologists for these groups routinely condemn suicide bombers and then describe them as part of "the cycle of violence in the Middle East" which would stop if only Israel would address their grievances. No doubt. Their grievance is the existence of Israel.

Arab terrorism against the state of Israel began in 1948 and never stopped. Historian Martin Gilbert documents late 1954 as the formal establishment of terrorist groups in the Gaza strip and north-eastern Sinai, supervised by the Egyptian government. From 1951–1956, Israeli vehicles were ambushed, farms attacked, fields booby-trapped and roads mined. Syria, Lebanon (and Jordan, largely from 1968–1971) developed into bases for terror. This murderous assault continued up to, during and since the Oslo peace process. The only relationship to peace that terrorism may have is that it generally flares up at any sign of progress towards it.

During his life, Rantissi vowed to take every inch of Israel by blood, accused then-Palestine Authority prime minister Abu Mazen of thrusting "a knife" into the Palestinian dialogue by offers to restrain the intifada, and called for "convoys of suicide bombers" with "thousands of sophisticated explosive belts". One has much sympathy for the response of the father of a young suicide bomber who wrote to the London Arabic daily Al-Hayat: "But what tears at the soul, pains the heart, and brings tears to the eyes more than anything else is the sight of these sheikhs and leaders evading sending their sons into the fray... Rantissi's wife has refrained from sending her son Muhammad to blow himself up."

Terrorism can be countered with guns or by preventive measures such as Israel's security fence. It cannot be appeased, which is perhaps why the Israeli government was intent on simultaneously assassinating Hamas leaders and announcing its withdrawal plans from Gaza. But the withdrawals, which saddle prime minister Ariel Sharon with the politically thankless job of dragging some protesting Israeli settlers out of their homes, have been totally rejected by both the Palestinian leadership and most leaders in the West.

If you are against Israel's security fence, in favour of the Arab so-called "right of return" (a demographic weapon of mass destruction which no Israeli government could accept) and opposed to Israel's withdrawal plans, the only possible end you have in mind is the total elimination of the Jewish state. In effect, the return of land by Israel is good news if your purpose is to create an independent Palestinian state but bad news if you want to destroy Israel.

All the same, one would expect that with Hamas weakened by the assassinations, Yasser Arafat might see the opportunity to come out of the rubble, take a bath and become the leader of an actual, functioning state. Palestine as a political entity has never existed. It has been an area owned or ruled by Turks, Egyptians, Lebanese, British and Jordanians. In a democratic election, it is most likely that Arafat would be elected and in any event would be the new nation's titular head of state. But he seems unable to give up the "struggle" and metamorphose from terrorist into statesman as a Jomo Kenyatta was able to do. That is the tragedy of the Palestinians: no leadership in their own land and allies in the West determined to encourage the worse elements among them.

It is nearly 10 years since I walked on the streets of Ramallah. One could see then, in spite of the neglect and poisonous nihilism of an occupation with no exit in sight, that this was once a city of spacious boulevards and seductive culture. Trees grew and flowered in Ramallah where now only piles of stones and litter can be seen. Arabs must have sat sipping dark, sweet coffee from small cups in outdoor restaurants or on the verandas of their homes without fear of mobs or the dreaded sound of Israeli tanks in search of bomb-makers.

The most fleeting contact with remnants of this culture evokes a fury at the forces among the Palestinians - zealots, ideologues and political theocrats - that are responsible for its destruction. From Paris to Moscow, from Jenin down to Hebron, there are neither Arabs nor Occidentals, it seems, willing to liberate Palestinians from Palestinian terror. That, rather than targeted killings, is the roadblock on the roadmap to peace.