On the stony hills of Judea and Samaria, in the refugee camps of Calandia, as well as in the room in the Mukhata where Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, cast his vote, I held a contradictory dialogue with Palestinian Arabs queuing up to vote:

Who will you vote for? Abu Mazen.

Why? Because he is the only one the Americans, the Israelis, and the rest of the world know and trust and hence, he is the right person to make peace with Israel. We cannot stand the violence anymore, and Abu Mazen will bring us a peaceful life, a future.

But are you ready to put an end to the intifada? No. Israelis are responsible. The violence is the result of Israel’s policies. Our self-defense [Heaven forbid calling it terrorism] is not the cause of violence; the real cause is Sharon’s thirst to dominate the Palestinians and grab our land.

The people I spoke to did not listen to any of my objections. Their confusion is authentic and deep, the confusion that comes from two basic factors. First: from the death of Arafat. Second: from defeat. Their armed terrorist enterprise has been defeated by Mr. Sharon’s war against terrorism. And history proves that changes in leadership often lead to other important changes. Israel, of course, has expectations about the new situation and sees Mr. Abbas as somebody who could bring something to the table.

Actually, until now, the Israeli government has tried to help him show leadership by easing security at check-points and by showing respect for the population. And yet, there are people who prefer to simplify such events, coming up with conspiracy theories, as the ones that I heard throughout the Palestinian Arab election. Peace Now prints its predictable articles saying that Mr. Sharon has been doing everything in his powers to undermine the Palestinian Arab election and that he has already carefully planned how to thwart the new leadership and annex the West Bank.

According to these voices, the measures taken by the Israeli government to facilitate the election process, and even the withdrawal from Gaza, are nothing but imperialist traps. On the other side, I find the right- wing commentaries aimed at finding similarities between Mr. Abbas and Arafat obvious and useless. Mr. Abbas certainly belongs to the “couche” of Arafat. Anwar Sadat belonged to the “couche” of Gamal Abdel Nasser, but this did not prevent Sadat from making peace with Israel and bringing a general improvement to the region.

It’s true that Mr. Abbas claims to be the real heir of the “rais.” But during his electoral campaign, Mr. Abbas consistently contradicted himself: He said that Mr. Sharon is his “partner,” and then that Israel is the “Zionist enemy.”

He said that the armed intifada has been an error and that the launching of Qassam rockets must end, and then he added that he will not raise a finger against Hamas and that he will hit them with a “Fallujah-style” operation. What I can say from the field is that he is perceived by his people as the right man to make a compromise with Israel and as the one who will stop the suicide bombers.

“I don’t like the suicide bombers,” a student of Bir Zeit University, Anwar Khatib, told me with unusually outspoken courage even after repeating the old song about the responsibility of Israel, “and Abu Mazen will build the future where I can be a really important computer programmer.”

Anyone who has recently visited Gaza or the West Bank knows that even if Palestinian Arab minds are still dominated by the insidious culture of Arafat’s anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli propaganda, the hope for a normal life, after so much death, is strong.

It is obvious that the eschatological aim of the Palestinian Arabs is not friendly to Israel. But it is also obvious that, after the display of the terrorist ferociousness by the Palestinian Arabs, the Israelis would rather see the West Bank annexed to Jordan – with an Egyptian protectorate in Gaza – instead of witnessing the birth of a Palestinian Arab state, as even President Bush asks for.

But let’s look at the reality: Mr. Sharon is trying to create a politically manageable situation for his disengagement, end terrorism, maintain the maximum portion of the West Bank for the future, and insert this plan into Mr. Bush’s world doctrine to fight terrorism through democracy to ensure Israel’s future in a new Middle East.

It is probably true that Palestinian Arabs still hope they will be able to destroy Israel, but they know – now more than ever – that Arafat’s intifada and his leadership in general led the Palestinian Arabs into a black hole, resulting in the loss of life, money, and support. Arafat, who was here until just weeks ago, is now dead.

Possibly, the event is so important that one risks failing to grasp its full significance. The Palestinian Arabs are not the same without Arafat. Even Ramallah, the town of the Mukhata, has completely changed since the departure of the “rais”: It has become a real city, with a mall, coffee shops, open stores, and girls with tight blue jeans walking around.

On the walls of the city you see fewer portraits of the shahids. Terrorism has diminished significantly. Since Arafat died, his power to make terrorism look like a normal event is also gone. Arafat had the power to hide terrorism under the table of international negotiations; condemn it publicly while it was taught in schools, celebrated in newspapers and in the streets, and pretend to be an internationally viable leader while buses were exploding in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

This power is gone now. Terrorism is a crime that Mr. Abbas doesn’t pretend to justify in front of the world that asks him to end it. His accountability rests on his power to end the violence.

Even if the germs of shahidism and suicidal terrorism are part of a sick society, this is no longer taken for granted. Mr. Abbas had to name it, he called it violence or armed intifada, and it will no longer be allowed to be presented as an action of militias, guerrillas, or freedom fighters. It cannot be hidden under the table anymore.

Almost nothing looks like yesterday. The new “rais” of the Palestinian Arab never wears a keffiyeh, a pistol, or a military jacket. Mr. Abbas looks for sympathy among the people not through a military charisma, which he does not possess, but through the promised of improvements in their well-being.

Mr. Abbas is trying to achieve stability, while Arafat lived on instability, the epicenter of a permanent earthquake that exploded and wrought havoc. Should there be an intifada today similar to the one desired by Arafat, it would be the end of Mr. Abbas, who is weak militarily.

On the contrary, Arafat owed all his life’s power and leadership to weapons. Mr. Abbas looks for a compromise with Israel because his people are extremely tired of war; if you talk to them today you realize it. People want their 7,000 prisoners held in the Israeli prisons back and to leave the underground, where thousands hide day after day.

This is the most important point: The desire to find a compromise, even if it’s temporary, directly derives from the impressive victory Mr. Sharon has imposed on terrorism. Mr. Sharon conducted an antiterrorist war that began with operation “Defensive Shield,” which has no strategic and practical precedent in history. It is surprising that those who so easily forget this and attack him from the right also believe that the war against terrorism today is the key to a better world and to winning the “Fourth World War.” Mr. Sharon has taught the Palestinian Arabs that each time a Qassam rocket falls on Sderot, or each time a bus explodes, the man responsible for the attack will be hunted down, arrested, or killed.

Mr. Abbas could ask for an alliance with Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and other terrorist organizations, not because he agrees with their principles, but because he knows they have an objective interest in agreeing to a truce. These men are either wanted or in prison, and Mr. Abbas did not promise them that he will kick the Jews into the sea, but he did give them the option to come out from the underground, or from the prisons.

Does this make them lovers of peace? No. It makes them a group of defeated people whose interest lies in putting an end, at least for the coming years, to the wrong strategy that guided their lives, the strategy of Arafat.

The Palestinian Arabs’ worst enemy today is the culture of violence. Everywhere you go, in any public building, in any cultural center, in any university, in institutes like the Passia, or in newspapers like the Jerusalem Times, you can see posters, banners, slogans painted on the walls, portraits and pictures that celebrate the shahids and display the evil nature of the Israelis.

Accusing Israel of the worst crimes, using the most delegitimizing terms (apartheid state, colonial, racist, and imperialist), and seeing it as intrinsically cruel is a disease that spread among the young men and women who were teenagers at the beginning of the intifada. What will Mr. Abbas do about it? Does he wish to heal it or to make it worse?

The dream palace of the Palestinian Arabs has been built on hatred of Israel, and the real challenge has arrived. Mr. Abbas must somehow end this hatred: This will prove to be a very difficult task with journalists and intellectuals, but among businessmen and the military it began to happen following the death of Arafat.

A relationship similar to the ones with Jordan and Egypt is likely to arise, where a cold, yet effective, peace is in place.

Most likely, at this point Mr. Abbas does not wish to fool Israel. He is likely to plan a long truce and a reconstruction of the destroyed infrastructure, to gain control of the territories and garner international support.

What his dreams are, we cannot know. We do know that the condition for his power today is to cope with defeat.

Democracy will not be the main characteristic of this operation. Fatah is still overwhelmingly powerful, and most importantly, in the words of Bernard Lewis, democracy is a medicine that the Middle East can take only in small doses, otherwise the risk of poisoning is high. Here, the potential of poisoning is very evident: More democracy means more freedom to spread public opinions, which are mainly the old ones, the ideas of Arafat, the ones that created the anti-Semitic nightmare.

In order to come out of this situation, Mr. Abbas could be at least a temporary solution. Yes, Mr. Abbas developed under Arafat, but one must not forget that the last lesson he received from Arafat is that by following his politics one ends up being defeated and becoming an insignificant piece of detritus in the global war against terrorism.

Ms. Nirenstein is an Italian journalist and author living in Israel. Her column was translated from the Italian by Rachel Donadio.