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Does Yasser Arafat think he'll get a better peace pact from the Bush administration?

That can be the only reason he's not signing a peace agreement with Israel while President Clinton is still in office.

The question is what more does Arafat think he can get? Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak was giving away the store.

Arafat could have started off the year 2001 with his own Palestinian state. He could have had 95 percent of the West Bank. He could have had most of what is East Jerusalem. And he possibly could have had some kind of authority over the Temple Mount.

But Arafat said no to all that.

He wanted more. He wanted to bring back thousands and thousands of Palestinian refugees into Israel proper.

A lot of those so-called refugees left their homes in Israel half-a-century ago when the Jewish state was born. If Arafat has his way, the sons and daughters of these refugees would be returning to Haifa, Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel, trying to reclaim homes they left.

Does Arafat really think that President-elect Bush will give that to him?

In the meantime, Arafat seems willing to send more armed militias out on the streets as long as there are enough 10-year-old Palestinian youth to march in front of them.

When Israeli troops try to defend themselves against the militia, inevitably those Palestinian kids get maimed or even killed.

What kind of leader would allow more than 350 of his own people to die fighting a better trained and more sophisticated Israeli army? Certainly, Arafat knows he can't win militarily.

His aim can only be to win a public relations battle over Israel. Arafat wants to convince the world that Israel is gunning down the Palestinian population. By allowing more deaths to occur each day, Arafat has found he is able to escape criticism for his intransigence at the negotiating table.

We can only shake our head in wonderment as the saga continues. Hopefully, Bush will see Arafat for what he is and deal accordingly.