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Olympic years have sometimes coincided with significant Middle East milestones.

The state of Israel came into being in 1948, the first Olympic year after WW2. The first Arab-Israeli war after that date was in 1956. Rumor has it that ruthless billionaire Yasser Arafat privately boasts of kickstarting his career with sponsorship of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Arafat is said to have been previously trained and sponsored by the Soviets. Perhaps it was, as some claim, under their tutelage that he mastered the art of proferring both gun and olive branch, always tantalising with the olive branch and then withdrawing it slightly out of reach, while constantly firing a gun.

So it was that he scotched the Oslo peace process with the (impossible) last-minute demand for a Palestinian "right of return" that would demographically destroy the Jewish state.

By virtue of this move Arafat destroyed the political career of dismayed Israeli Labor PM Ehud Barak, but also resurrected the career of his Lebanon-era nemesis Ariel Sharon.

Frightened and disaffected Israelis identified with Sharon when he visited the Jewish Temple Mount in Olympic year 2000, incensing Arabs protective of what is also a Muslim holy site. The politically calculated move provided the catalyst for the murder lemming-led bloodshed that has flown since that time. It also catapulted Sharon into the prime ministership.

Now we are in another Olympic year. And it is Sharon making the moves that represent the greatest current hope of curtailing violence in this horrible saga: the launch of Israel's security fence, the decapitation of Islamofascist (new word? ) icon Yassin, and now the withdrawal from Gaza.

Sharon's plan will finally force the removal of a few thousand Jewish Israelis from the midst of over a million Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza strip. It is a sensible move that is a relief to most Israelis and to most Jews around the world who can't understand how these settlements survived for so long in the first place.

It lifts a great burden from the Israeli security forces, and removes an enormous inconvenience to long-suffering Palestinians living in the vicinity of the settlements. Main transport arteries, for example, are currently blocked for hours on a daily basis while the Israeli army guards the movement of Jewish settlers to and from their Gaza homes.

In tandem with this the erection of the security fence, as US Ambassador Dennis Ross explained to FNC's Brit Hume yesterday, renders redundant the myriad of roadblocks Israelis have placed throughout the West Bank. These have afforded Israel a preventative buffer against terrorist attacks, but of course also grossly hinder the free movement of the vast majority of Palestinians who are not involved with such attacks.

Such roadblocks, with the erection of the fence, will be no more. Israelis and Palestinians will, as Mr Sharon says, have the opportunity of (hostile) "disengagement".

It's early days yet, but Arafat's answer to all this so far has been to criticise (again), to scream "right of return" (again), and to petition the good old United Nations - which, in the last few days, yet again voted to censure Israel for "human rights violations" even as 11 Palestinian suicide bomb attempts were foiled in Israel in one week and it was revealed that the woman carrying the last bomb may have been pressured to do so to repent for having sex before marriage.

The reactions of European leaders have generally been more cautious and positive. Even German Chancellor Schroeder recognises Sharon's move as a positive first step, and Joschka Fischer's reaction was similarly hopeful.

The real test for Middle East peace, however, is in the attitudes on the ground amongst ordinary Arabs. The Washington Post reports today the comment of a Palestinian who became a refugee in Jordan:

"Our main job is to raise children to return to Palestine, even if it's in a million years.
"So Bush can say whatever he wants. My great hope is that my two sons will die as martyrs for Palestine."

When such people accept Israelis as humans, accept and make the best of the hand they are dealt, and dream that their children might be Olympic heros rather than martyrs, that is when we will see peace in the Middle East.