It is these activities, which offer the promise of a more Islamic future, which the more cautious Hamas minds may be reluctant to place at risk through a bombing campaign.How strong is Hamas politically?It is generally accepted that about 15 to 20 per cent of the population of Gaza and the West Bank supports Hamas (proportionally more in Gaza, where economic conditions are more deplorable.) Although Hamas did not officially take part in the Palestinian elections in January, it did support some candidates and generally they were successful.And militarily?The strength of the “military” units of Hamas is the subject of feverish conjecture (not least in the Israeli security services). A campaign of suicide bombing requires little more than quantities of Semtex and an endless supply of young “martyrs”.Could Yasser Arafat do more to prevent the bombings?Yes, probably, but at a price which might be just as destructive, in the long term, to the prospects of a lasting peace. He could crush Hamas in the short term by imposing the kind of police state familiar elsewhere in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia spring to mind). But he might have to fight a Palestinian civil war to do so, triggering a new spiral of bitterness among young militants opposed to the peace.What can Israel do?Israel is already the most security-conscious democratic nation on earth. There is little more that can be done to stop suicide attacks on buses, other than permanently sealing Israel’s borders with Gaza and the West Bank, causing huge economic disruption. The Peres government has warned that it might take direct action against Hamas inside the West Bank and Gaza. This would strike at the heart of the authority granted to the fledgling Palestinian government and, conceivably, provoke fighting between Israeli and Arafat forces.Will there be more bombs?One theory is that these are revenge attacks for the assassination on 5 January by Israeli security services of Yahyah Ayyash, the Hamas master- bomber known as the “engineer”.But if that were the aim why would there be four bombs?The suspicion of Middle East experts is that this is not just a revenge attack; it is more strategic.

The possibility opens up that the bombing may continue, intermittently, over the next 11 weeks or until the Peres government grows desperate and takes direct action within Gaza and the West Bank, placing the whole peace process in jeopardy.So is the Middle East peace doomed?Maybe. It is certainly facing its bloodiest and most politically agonising test. It would be wrong to underestimate the amount of political capital invested in Middle East peace: by the Peres government; by the Israeli and Palestinian peoples; by Mr Arafat; by President Clinton. Although a patchwork unsatisfactory peace, it is more blast-proof than it seems. But it is not necessarily robust enough to withstand an unholy alliance between the Israeli right and Islamic fundamentalism..

Lord Woolf’s office in the House of Lords is surprisingly small for the command centre of a legal revolution Every shelf and surface overflows with books and files. He is flanked by a gallery of family photographs and, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes most of the time, it is more like meeting a don in his study than the Law Lord who is reinventing the way civil justice is administered. Nor is he anything like the conservative stereotype of a judge in his sixties. “What I object to about the present system is that it’s not a level playing field, and it’s too expensive and it’s too slow.” Costs should be in proportion to the damages, and they seldom are.