ISRAEL AND THE SA'UDS CAN NEVER AFFORD TO LET THE PLO HOLD ELECTIONS:

In the wake of images of Israeli police firing tear gas into the mosque, Hamas issued an ultimatum: If Israel didn't take certain steps by 6 p.m. that evening -- the most important being the withdrawal of Israeli police from the Temple Mount -- it would face Hamas's retribution.

It was a public, humiliating demand, designed to be ignored. And ignore it Israel did, prompting Hamas to launch the first mass salvo of the new rocket war.

That context is vital. Hamas wanted a fight, and it wanted it over Al-Aqsa. It waited for the images of Israeli police apparently assaulting the holy site to make its move.

That's because Al-Aqsa is no mere backdrop to this story. It is the heart of it.

The Palestinians are a people defined by the experience of displacement. Their historians speak of their national identity coalescing in the face of the pressure of Jewish immigration and Israel's founding. In the sacred complex that sits atop the Temple Mount, which the Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary, Palestinians find a source of religious validation for their story, an anchor of identity and dignity that no external political weakness or vulnerability can diminish.

That makes Al-Aqsa more than a place of prayer or ritual. It represents in the Palestinian telling a tangible promise of redemption.

Hamas has long understood that its path to dominion over the Palestinian political world must pass through that place. Nothing else unites or mobilizes Palestinians as it does.

The rockets raining down since Monday "in Al-Aqsa's defense" may have targeted Israelis, but, at least in the first day or two, battering Israel was at least partly a means to another end. The unspoken target was Fatah.

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