Arab Leaders Must Stop Reign of Terror : Zealots: Mubarak and Hussein stand to lose the peace they made if Hamas and Hezbollah are not contained.

If God had any more advocates in the Middle East, there wouldn’t be a village, or a soul, left to fight over. Death and destruction appear to be the central accomplishment of the religious impulse, at least as it is interpreted by those fanatics who claim to honor Muhammad.

What else is one to make of news reports that it is soldiers of the “Party of God” in Lebanon who slam rockets into the homes of families in northern Israel? Or of the ultrareligious fanatics in Hamas who turn themselves into human bombs and blow up civilians in buses as a means of finding eternal happiness in the next life?

While one wants to be evenhanded and hold fanatics devoted to the world’s other great religions equally responsible, it doesn’t equate. Fortunately, it has been centuries since Christian Crusaders committed mayhem in the region. And while Jewish extremists can be a murderous bunch, they have never been able to act with the government-sanctioned impunity of their Muslim counterparts.

By contrast, the troops of Hezbollah, the Party of God, exist solely at the sufferance of the governments of Syria and Iran. And despite all the enormous respect owed King Hussein for his courage in coming to peace with Israel, it is undeniable that he has allowed Hamas to operate freely in Jordan.

Syria’s President Hafez Assad acts, as he always has, out of the most cynical of motives. He cares nothing for the uprooted Lebanese clutching their children and possessions while scurrying for safety. They and the Palestinian refugees he claims to be concerned about have never been more than pawns in his sinister game.

Hussein’s tolerance of Hamas is more difficult to explain. He should know better than anyone that there is no compromising with religious fanatics, for chaos is their only attainable goal. Instability and violence is their religion, and they will always find the basic condition of peace--coexistence with those of differing faiths--to be intolerable. The U.S., as the key external partner in the peace process, should extend to Hussein whatever support is needed to eliminate the Hamas nest.

It is, of course, sacrilegious as well as simply unfair to suggest that the Koran is the rightful property of those killers. Leading prophets of peace in the Mideast like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s Hussein are fortified by their interpretations of the Koran, which has been a positive inspiration to millions.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims abhor terror as antithetic to their religion as well as to their physical survival. As is the case now in Lebanon, they end up being the main victims of the cycle of violence that terror inevitably unleashes. Most Lebanese desperately want their country to return to its traditional role as a tranquil center of trade rather than a zone of murderous warfare.

But for that to happen, the mantle of religious righteousness must be seized from the assassins who now claim its authority. Unless that is done soon, Mubarak and Hussein along with Yasser Arafat and anyone else who leads in the direction of peace will find their cause betrayed.

The zealots must be pushed off the historical stage. They are the sworn enemies of a peace that the people of the region need for their survival as much as they need water, and the sad fact is that the forces of darkness are winning. The constant drumbeat of violence takes its inevitable toll, obliterating the optimism that peacemaking requires.

It is optimism that provides the momentum necessary to sweeping away the exasperating legacy of false hopes, betrayal and suspicion that marks the history of the Arab-Israeli struggle. Once again, both the Palestinian and Israeli publics are being overcome by the despair born of decades of mistrust and danger.

At this point, responsibility for the continued success of the peace process lies with the Arab leadership outside of Israel and Palestine. Prime Minister Shimon Peres cannot be faulted for reacting to well-armed terrorists by attacking the bases of their military power in Lebanon or cordoning off the areas of Palestinian self-rule. Nor can Arafat be justly criticized for striking so hard at the Hamas elements in Gaza and the West Bank. Civil libertarians who complain about Arafat being heavy-handed miss the point that this is not a case of falsely yelling “fire” in a theater; this theater is indeed on fire.

If peace fails, the big losers will be the Palestinian people. Israel will pull back to a fortress state and manage to survive renewed cycles of conflict. But the Palestinians, for whom the rest of the Arab world has long professed great concern, will be cheated of their historic chance to attain freedom in this life.