<p>YOU CANNOT make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian war without first making sense of 1993.</p>
<p>That year found Israel in reasonably good shape. Its economy was the most powerful in the Middle East. Its military power was respected and feared. Its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world, which for so long had dreamed of wiping Israel off the map, were at last coming to accept that the Jewish state was here to stay. To be sure, Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization still plotted to ''liberate'' Israel from the Jews, but they were in exile in Tunisia and their political and moral capital were close to nil.</p>