Reliving the bloody events of three-plus years of intifada gives one the sickening feeling of watching a train wreck in slow motion.

The difference is that this wreck was no accident, but the calculated and enduring strategy of Yasser Arafat.

Saul Singer, a columnist for this newspaper, makes this strategy clear in a collection of 100 or so of his columns that include some unsigned editorials. A few go back to the 1990s or stray to miscellaneous topics, but the frame of the collection is the calamity known as the "al-Aksa intifada."

By way of preliminaries, Singer tells us that the connective theme of the essays presented here "is that there is less separating these two worlds [America and Israel in the face of terrorism] than meets the eye." His point is that America and Israel are fighting the same enemy, which is impossible to gainsay, but one might argue that much of Singer's reportage shows just how different the situations of the two countries are.

The terrorists with whom America is at war can kill thousands, damage the country, and degrade its quality of life. But they pose no existential threat to it.

Israel's survival, alas, is not a certainty. In one of the columns, Singer reports a poll showing that a significant slice of Israeli high school students harbors doubts about their country's permanence, a feeling shared by a majority of Arab-Israelis surveyed. And, as several of Singer's columns remind us, the essence of the conflict with which Israel is saddled is the refusal of the Arabs to accept its existence.

Moreover, however much world opinion may condemn US policy or exude anti-Americanism, no one of consequence expresses sympathy with the cause championed by Osama bin Laden, whatever it may be, or urges Washington to negotiate with him. But the world is fairly bursting with sympathy for the Palestinians, and (with the notable and noble exception of George W. Bush) it condemns Israel's reluctance to negotiate with Arafat.

Singer has a keen eye for the telling detail, and the examples he invokes of the baseness of the Palestinian leadership makes one want to cry out in frustration and rage at formulations that treat the two sides as morally equivalent. One column quotes the announcement by Arafat's Aksa Martyrs Brigades exultantly claiming credit for "the courageous qualitative operation" of murdering a mother and her four- and five-year-old sons in their beds in Kibbutz Metzer.

Another column quotes from a newspaper under Arafat's control (Al-Hayat al-Jadida): "The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of the Lebanese suicide bombers who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson. . . . They are the most honorable people among us."

And there is more, such as Arafat's denial of any historical link between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. Arafat's spirit is reflected by his wife, Suha, who, in the presence of Hillary Clinton no less, invoked the ancient blood libel against the Jews, to wit, that Israel systematically uses "poison gas" and has "chemically contaminated about 80 percent of water sources used by Palestinians."

Most damning and disheartening of all, Singer tells us of a public opinion poll conducted internationally by the respected Pew organization asking which of a list of world leaders can be trusted most "to do the right thing." In one country the favored leader was Osama bin Laden, and that "country" was the Palestinian Authority.

Yet despite this evidence of Palestinian depravity, Europe, as Singer illustrates again with powerful examples, takes the side of the Palestinians against Israel, as does the UN.

Singer is a commentator rather than an advocate. His writing is spare in policy prescription, rich in apercus and well-turned phrases. (The most interesting recommendation he offers has to do not with Israel's short-term security but with the future of the Jewish people. He makes a compelling case for overturning the long-standing Jewish avoidance of proselytizing.) It is refreshing to read the obvious but rarely stated truth that the intifada is a war of aggression, or, as Singer baldly but correctly puts it, "unprovoked, illegal, and barbaric . . . aggression." He captures the horror of this period in the penetrating formula "our long September 11."

Singer deftly reveals the trap in various Arab peace formulas that explicitly or implicitly uphold the so-called right of return: "Getting Arabs to say they accept Israel is relatively easy; getting them to accept it as a Jewish state has been next to impossible." He is equally trenchant on the various plans to divide sovereignty over Jerusalem: "The status quo is that Arabs and Jews live peacefully, if separately, side by side, in the same city. That peace depends on Israeli control in and around Jerusalem. The effect of the proposals is to give the Palestinians the ability to rend the peaceful fabric of Jerusalem with barely a shrug or the lifting of a finger." The result, Singer warns, might be like those other divided capitals, Sarajevo and Belfast.

Ultimately, what is most satisfying in these essays is the painstaking moral reasoning that informs them. For all the controlled anger Singer gives voice to, he never despairs of the hope for peace with the Arabs, and returns several times to the plight of Israel's own Arab citizens. He also writes with great passion, good sense, and affection about the sensitive issue of relations among Israel's disparate Jewish communities. Singer was born in the U.S. and lived there most of his childhood, but in the combination of tough-mindedness and good-heartedness that suffuses this work, he exemplifies the legendary qualities of the sabra.

Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.