Word: intifadeh
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...Arafat bodyguards and killed five others. Only a handful of senior aides and bodyguards remained with Arafat: seven hours prior to the Israeli invasion, Arafat had sent most of his top aides home. (Arafat's wife Suha and daughter Zahwa have remained in Paris for most of the intifadeh.) With electricity cut, Arafat was forced to rely on a generator for power. He had little food, water or medical supplies. "He won't be able to go to the toilet without us knowing about it," an Israeli intelligence officer told TIME, with not much exaggeration...
Among ordinary Israelis, the clamor to strike back with massive force for last week's Netanya massacre was overwhelming. In recent months, the scale and audacity of Palestinian attacks has steadily climbed, but for sheer barbarism, last Wednesday's assault was unmatched by any other in the 18-month intifadeh. The Hamas bomber timed the attack to kill Jews at the Park Hotel just as they sat down to the seder, a meal that celebrates the liberation of the Jews from the oppression of the biblical Pharaoh. Most of the victims were elderly Israelis. The terrorists plotted the Passover massacre...
Complicating matters, the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hizballah, which helped drive Israel's forces out of Lebanon two years ago, has boosted its support for the intifadeh. In January Jordanian officials arrested three Hizballah guerrillas for trying to smuggle weapons into the West Bank. Israeli officials say the group was behind a cross-border raid into northern Israel that killed six Israelis last month. On Saturday Hizballah launched a new attack on Israeli soldiers guarding the country's northern border. In an interview with TIME, Hizballah's deputy secretary, General Naim Qassem, said, "It is our duty...
...corrupt, incompetent government he heads. Plus, Arafat figures the violence will demoralize the Israelis and soften their positions at the negotiating table. Violence has worked before. The hijackings of the 1970s kept the Palestinian cause alive in a way that Kurds and Basques can only envy. The first intifadeh, though far less brutal than this one, brought the Palestinians the Oslo peace talks. And, most relevant to Arafat today, Lebanon's Hizballah militia compelled Israel to withdraw unconditionally from south Lebanon two years ago--just before the fateful Camp David talks--by bloodying Israeli troops in the field and Israeli...
...reminder of Arab weakness. But it was the destruction of the P.L.O. in Lebanon by Ariel Sharon that decisively shifted the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation to the occupied territories and Israel. Helplessness and shame gave way to anger that later poured into the streets as defiance. That was the first intifadeh...