The Third Way was done in by its attempt to differentiate between Golan settlers and those in the territories, when both are equally crucial to Israel's security. The Third Way's disappearance from the political map offers further proof that a party with a questionable ideology will eventually collapse.

Avigdor Kahalani, a brave commander and fighter on the Golan Heights in 1973, and Yehuda Harel, the father of the proud settlement movement whose communities have sunk their roots into the basalt stones of the Heights since 1967, have been "sent home," and justifiably so, because of the strange dance they've been performing the past few years. On the one hand, their motto was that Israel should not return the Heights to the Syrians, who posed and still pose a threat to Israel's security from the North. But on the other hand, they objected in large measure to the settlement of Judea and Samaria, and more than once criticized the settlers there.

The Third Way refused to maintain a united front with the Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, who are modern pioneers of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, certainly no less than the residents of the Golan for all that the latter made the basalt bloom and planted magnificent vineyards there.

Kahalani and Harel tried to ignore this logical and ideological contradiction. But in fact, the settlements in Judea and Samaria are the forward defense line of the coastal plain and Jerusalem. The Third Way leaders didn't understand that if they did not stand shoulder to shoulder with these settlers, who, with their homes, protect Israel's heartland, there would be no reason for anyone to support their ideology that the Golan, up there somewhere in the North, was crucial to Israel's defense, and that anyone who would withdraw from there would, in the words of the late Yitzhak Rabin, "abandon Israel's security." The Third Way's false distinction compromised its credibility and did not allow it to develop into a serious party. Harel amused himself with various ideological zig- zags, while Kahalani proved, as did Yitzhak Mordechai and Amnon Shahak, that you can be a brave and daring IDF officer but a political dud from the start.

ON TOP of his pseudo-ideological failure, Kahalani proved a total weakling as internal security minister. And I'm not referring here to the fact that Israelis' homes, cars, farm equipment, and at times even their lives, were all made fair game for criminals once you got close to the Green Line, but to his entire behavior during the attempts to close the PLO offices in the Orient House.

Here and now, in the defense of Israel's rights in its capital, Jerusalem, Kahalani failed and demonstrated the total bankruptcy of what we still, for some reason, call our "security forces," though they have turned into a source of lack of security for Jews, and a symbol of capitulation and obsequiousness to the Arabs. Thus, it is no surprise that the voters booted out Kahalani and Harel, though they are both good men who I personally admire. Because there is no such thing as a "half-ideology," just as there's no such thing as being half-pregnant. Look at what happened to the Center Party, which had no ideology and ended up with only six Knesset seats.

The residents of the Golan Heights, who are so crucial to the security of the State of Israel, now need the support and encouragement of anyone with eyes in his head. There is a grave danger that some people might try to exchange them and their homes and all they have built in over 30 years, for a handful of dollars and "electronic defense and weapons systems," which are worth about as much as those that are being used to "defend" the million refugees forced out of Kosovo.

The writing on the wall left by the death of The Third Way should be carefully read by some other Jewish Zionist parties, particularly the Likud, which suffered a painful blow in this week's elections.

Whoever wants to serve the public and earn its trust must base its ideology on foundations of truth. Otherwise, it will disappear like The Third Way, which turned into a fifth wheel.