The visit paid to Temple Mount by Gen. Ariel Sharon was widely interpreted as the flash point that brought on the apparent end of the peace process in the Middle East. Those who nurture isolationist fantasies should reflect on the repercussions.

  • Palestinian "youth" were enraged and expressed themselves as youth do in that part of the world: They began to throw stones at Israelis. The Israelis counterattacked. Counterattacks are almost always more severe than what provoked them, understandably so. There is the further factor that the Israelis are a modern military force, the Palestinians much less than that.

  • The prestige of the United States is immediately on the line, this because President Clinton was the godfather of the aborted Camp David meeting of three months ago. At that spectacular exchange, Prime Minister Barak of Israel offered what some people call 90 percent of the occupied territories. Arafat wanted 100 percent, plus sovereignty over East Jerusalem. Then after the post-Sharon explosions, Mr. Clinton offered to go to Cairo and sit down with Arafat and Barak and try to begin anew. That offer was spurned.

    The impact of the rejection is palpable. To say just that -- "No" -- to a proffered meeting with the president of the United States fires mutinous juices, and Pan-Arabia lights up.

  • A U.S. destroyer in Yemen is bombed in a suicide attack by a harbor boat, causing extensive damage. It is a terrorist's attack, and speculation is reasonable that it is a thrust of reanimated anti-Americanism. Whether an expression of Saddam Hussein's cloistered malevolence, or an extension of the stone-throwing animus of the Palestinians, we do not know, and should not particularly care. The point is, Sumus Romani -- We Are Romans -- isn't working. And the effect of it is that the day of the terrorist is renewed, and every U.S. citizen in the area -- and Yemen is about as far away as you can get from Jerusalem in the Arab world -- is threatened.

  • The Israel theater conflagration rises to a new intensity. It is pithily expressed by the two leaders. Barak says that the peace process is ended. Arafat says his people must renew their determination to recover their territories and establish their headquarters in Jerusalem.

  • The price of oil shoots up by 8 percent. The market plunges by 379 points. There is commentary out there to the effect that the regional explosion could mean the end of the American boom, as consumers steel themselves for the austerities of high-cost oil.