As Secretary of State Powell barnstorms around the Middle East promoting a “road map” for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, people are recalling the similar diplomacy in which officials of the Clinton administration’s State Department engaged. They were trying to implement an earlier series of road maps known as the Oslo agreements. One participant in that effort, Martin Indyk, reviewed the record the other day at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That’s the key here to an effective process: Both sides have to be kept to their commitments, have to be held to their commitments. If Oslo failed, it wasn’t just because the Palestinians saw that the more Israel gave the more they could gain through pursuing violence. It was rather that there was not a commitment, an honest commitment on Arafat’s part to give up violence,” Mr. Indyk said. “That is why he is no longer a possible partner for an Israeli-Palestinian process.”

Mr. Indyk’s assessment of the reasons Oslo failed is incomplete. There’s another reason, too — it relied too much on one person, Yasser Arafat, and not enough on genuine democratization and the rule of law. In that regard, Ariel Sharon’s October 18, 1991, speech at Oxford University is instructive. There Mr. Sharon said, “Long-term security from aggressive war can be assured only by a democratization of the regime. Only the tools of modern, Western democracy can provide a permanent barrier against the build-up of military might, and above all, against mass means of destruction, which facilitate aggression.” Mr. Sharon went on to say that only in such a situation “can we speak of a true peace.” The latest road map calls for elections, and President Bush spoke last week of sending Justice O’Connor to help the Arabs with rule of law. Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell, however, have also been going out of their way recently to tout the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, and his security chief, Muhammad Dahlan. All people of good will are impatient for a route to end the attacks on Israel. But setting up a new Palestinian thugocracy to replace the one that had been run by Mr. Arafat is a shortcut that has its own risks.