Season of Revenge

By Romesh Ratnesar

The tanks rumbled into Ramallah as dawn broke and thunder rolled on Good Friday. Yasser Arafat knew they were coming after him. Barricaded in a windowless two-room office, he could only sit and rant as much of the Israeli force entering Ramallah--100 armored personnel carriers, 60 tanks and 2,500 soldiers--encircled his compound, their gun barrels swinging into position for a vengeful assault. Arafat worked the phones, dialing diplomats around the world, beseeching them for help. Sources inside Arafat's office told TIME that Arafat warned of a bloody battle between his forces and the Israeli army, hoping that prospect would prompt the international community to force the Israelis to desist. He phoned the Jerusalem hotel room of Anthony Zinni, the U.S. special envoy to the region, and pleaded with him to tell his bosses in the Bush Administration to stop what was about to happen. "It's an attack on me personally," he said. "They want to get rid of me."

He was right. Israeli government sources told TIME that hours before the assault on Arafat's compound--retaliation for the Passover slaughter by a Hamas suicide bomber of 20 Israelis and a tourist in the seaside city of Netanya--Prime Minister Ariel Sharon informed members of his Cabinet that he wanted to send forces into Ramallah to arrest Arafat and expel him from the Palestinian territories. "We should send Arafat away, out of the country," Sharon said. "We should not let him stay." But the heads of Israel's intelligence and security agencies all argued that releasing Arafat from the four-month confinement in Ramallah that Israel has imposed on him and pushing him abroad would embolden him to collude openly with terrorist groups and organize strikes against Israel. Cabinet ministers told TIME that at 5:30 a.m. Friday, Sharon settled on a different strategy: Israel would officially identify Arafat as an enemy, "isolate" him in his Ramallah headquarters, destroy the surrounding buildings and arrest or kill Palestinian militants they believed had holed up inside--but would stop short of raiding Arafat's bunker. "The only commitment we've made," Police Minister Uzi Landau told TIME, "is not to kill him."

To hard-liners in the Sharon government, that qualifies as restraint. To much of the rest of the world, the Israeli offensive that followed, though born out of months of simmering rage at Palestinian terror and Arafat's inability or refusal to stop it, was a staggering display of aggression. It was also potentially the most dangerous escalation yet in a war that people on both sides plainly hate but find impossible to escape.

While the Israelis insisted they did not plan to kill Arafat, they successfully made him think they would. On Saturday, after tanks had leveled much of the compound, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at the remains of Arafat's redoubt. At 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Arafat called one of his Cabinet ministers, Nabil Shaath, in the Jordanian capital of Amman. His voice shaking with fear, Arafat ordered Shaath to call Arab and European leaders. "Tell them the Israelis are going to take over my office," he said. The Israelis said they sought the surrender of several high-ranking Palestinian militants thought to be hiding out in the compound.

The grim scenes of all-out war in the West Bank seemed to have a particularly depressing impact in Washington and Crawford, Texas. After months on the sidelines, the Bush Administration recently tiptoed into the peacemaking fray--to contain the combat between the Israelis and Palestinians but also to try to assuage Arab resistance to a U.S. military campaign against Iraq. Palestinian and Israeli sources told TIME that both Sharon and Arafat called Secretary of State Colin Powell as Israel mobilized its forces last Friday. When Bush woke up Friday morning in Crawford, he was informed of the Israeli assault during his daily national-security briefing. After that, he led an hour-long video teleconference on the crisis with his national-security team. He decided that the Administration would restrict its initial public statements to a Powell press conference that afternoon--and that the statements would contain no criticism of Israel. Powell called for Sharon to "consider the consequences" of his actions and limit civilian casualties, but his posture effectively gave the Israelis a green light. White House officials indicated that while the Administration has not abandoned efforts to mediate a truce between the Israelis and the Palestinians, it doesn't plan to restrain Israel or launch any new initiative to halt the violence. "Ultimately," one senior aide told TIME, "we're going to try to ride it out."

Late last week, as Arafat's fate hung in the balance, the U.S. did vote for a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding Israeli withdrawal from Ramallah--which, under an agreement signed by Israel, has been under Palestinian self-rule since 1995. But at a hastily convened press conference in Crawford Saturday, the President pointedly did not call for a pullout, instead saying Arafat and Arab leaders "could do a lot more" to stop Palestinian terror. "I firmly believe that we can achieve a peace in the region," he said.

Meanwhile, the region seemed about to come undone. "If Arafat is killed, all hell will break loose," a senior Arab diplomat told TIME. "You can say goodbye to the peace process for 10 years." Before storming into Arafat's compound, the Israelis blared over a loudspeaker to those inside, "Lay down your arms and come out." Israeli officials told TIME that the Egoz Battalion, a highly trained unit of commandos, led the room-to-room raid through Arafat's compound. Within 24 hours, the Israelis had arrested 150 Palestinians--including fugitives on their wanted list--wounded 40 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.

What is unclear is whether the Israelis have accomplished anything beyond that. Even as Israeli officials flooded airwaves Friday to cast the military operation in Ramallah as a defense against future terrorist attacks, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl blew herself up outside a Jerusalem supermarket, killing two Israelis. The next day, a suicide bomber injured at least 32 patrons of a Tel Aviv cafe. On both sides, the whipsaw of violence silenced the cautiously hopeful talk of a prospective cease-fire and possible resumption of the peace process that greeted the return of Zinni to the region last month.

The Israeli invasion came hours after 22 Arab countries endorsed a peace proposal by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that, for the first time in history, offers Israel normal relations with all Arab states, albeit in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from all territories occupied in the 1967 war and its agreement that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to homes in what is now Israel. But any Arab-Israeli comity created by the Arab League's announcement disintegrated on Friday. Israeli Cabinet members agreed that the Beirut summit was a step toward Arab acceptance of Israel's legitimacy, but the terms of Abdullah's proposal remain unacceptable to Israel: Sharon has no intention of giving back all the occupied territories, and the Israelis reject the idea that Palestinian refugees have the right to return to Israel proper. Moreover, Sharon fumed at the Arabs' failure to condemn the Passover attack.

Arab diplomats interviewed by TIME accused the Israeli Prime Minister of deliberately sabotaging the Arab peace overture with his attack on Arafat. In an interview with TIME, Abdullah called Sharon's assault on Arafat "a brutal, despicable, savage, inhumane and cruel action." He continued, "The acts we are witnessing represent the views of a criminal who has blood on his hands," and he vowed, "Palestinian resistance to the occupation will continue."

So what now? The recent undulations of the conflict have left ordinary Israelis and Palestinians numb with shock and the rest of the world bewildered by a conflict that seems without end. In the frenzy of mortar fire, bombings, hurried press conferences and banner headlines, four key questions emerge:

Why is Israel going after Arafat so aggressively?

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 to send a message: no Israeli life is safe, anywhere or anytime.

By the time Sharon's Cabinet met in an emergency session the next night, militants had struck again, killing four Israelis in a settlement near the West Bank city of Nablus. Israeli officials tell TIME that Cabinet ministers agreed at once to hit back militarily, then debated for six hours how to punish Arafat. The Israelis are aware that Arafat cannot completely control Hamas, the Islamic group that carried out the Netanya massacre. But they complain that most of the time he doesn't even try. He has failed to arrest hundreds of militants from Hamas and its sister group, Islamic Jihad, which Israel has specifically identified on lists given to the Palestinian Authority. What's more, the Israelis say, by glorifying killers as "martyrs," Arafat encourages them and puts himself on their side. Anyway, if it is Hamas killing Israelis one day, the next day it is al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Arafat's Fatah political organization that has now overtaken Hamas as the No. 1 instigator of attacks.

The Israelis believe Arafat has been duplicitous in his talks with Zinni over a cease-fire. U.S. officials tell TIME that before the Netanya attack, Zinni had made progress toward a truce. He had asked the two sides to give him lists of conditions they wanted to see in place before they would agree to quit shooting. Early last week Zinni whittled down the two sets of demands into a single "bridging" proposal, which he presented to Sharon and Arafat the day before Passover. According to a senior U.S. State Department official, Zinni told them to make their choice. The Israelis accepted; Arafat, claiming the plan put unfair burdens on the Palestinians, rejected it. After the Netanya massacre, Arafat scrambled to give the impression that he was willing to enter a cease-fire, but no one believed him. Says a senior U.S. official: "I can't say that he's even agreed to implement the Zinni plan."

The Israelis feel they exercised admirable restraint by not attempting to expel or kill Arafat. They also held their fire until the Arab summit had concluded. Sharon aides say the Prime Minister held back from removing Arafat not only on the advice of his commanders but also out of a sense that the Bush Administration doesn't yet want him to take an irrevocable step. "Washington was in the back of his mind," says a Sharon aide.

Will the Israeli strategy stop Palestinian terror?

Even the most hawkish Israeli Cabinet member would say that for the immediate future at least, the answer is no. But the siege of Arafat's headquarters was only the first part of the Israeli army's plan. Military sources tell TIME that the army intends to keep troops in Ramallah searching for wanted gunmen and terrorists for another month. If the deployment there is successful--lots of arrests of Palestinian suspects with minimal Israeli casualties--the army will repeat the exercise in other Palestinian-held cities beginning with Nablus, the sources say. By week's end Israeli tanks had rolled into the West Bank towns of Beit Jala and Beituniya. Israel began to activate 20,000 military reservists to prepare a supply of troops that can step in when the initial assault teams move on.

While the Israelis targeted Ramallah chiefly because of the presence of Arafat, they also suspect that the town is crawling with militants. Last week Israeli intelligence officials said forces were hunting two key leaders of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Nasser Awwas, a founder of the group, is thought to have gone underground in Ramallah, along with the Brigades' effective leader, Fatah West Bank chief Marwan Barghouti. Having judged Arafat unwilling to arrest his own people, the Israelis plan to do the job for him.

But the crackdown could just as easily backfire by boosting popular sympathy for Arafat and rallying the sometimes disparate Palestinian groups to join forces against the occupying enemy. Last week Palestinian militant groups lined up to back Arafat and threaten Israel with more violence. Hamas declared that radical Islamic and secular factions had agreed to coordinate efforts. Another extremist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, announced that "every Israeli--inside and outside Israel--is a target." Even some Israelis thought Sharon's Ramallah venture would only worsen matters. Said Yossi Beilin, a member of Israel's center-left Labor party, which is part of Sharon's coalition: "Retaliation will not stop suicide bombings. It will increase them."

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 to be by [the Palestinians'] side and offer them all types of support."

Will Arafat crack down on the militants now?

On this point, and perhaps only this point, the Israelis and Palestinians agree: he won't. But they diverge in explaining why. Members of the Sharon government, as well as much of the Israeli public and a good number of Bush Administration officials, believe Arafat has the power to take on groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He just chooses not to--in part because he fears that doing so would threaten his hold on power. Some exasperated Israelis charge that Arafat has failed to confront Palestinian terrorism because, perversely, he benefits from it: the steady waves of attacks have demoralized segments of Israeli society and invited military responses by Sharon that make Israel look like a bully in the eyes of many around the world.

The Palestinians argue that Arafat's inaction is a matter of can't, not won't, and that the Israelis are to blame. Even as the conflict has intensified, Arafat's security forces have arrested dozens of militants wanted by the Israelis. But Palestinian officials, and even some Israelis, say the four-month siege of Arafat's compound immobilized the Palestinian leader, cut him off from his deputies and prevented him from carrying out more arrests. And now that the Israelis have destroyed his command and communications structure, Arafat has lost what little authority he still retained. "This is the test," says Arafat adviser Edward Abington, a former U.S. diplomat. "If Arafat's gone, let's see if things get any better. I don't think they will."

Can the Bush Administration save the day?

Arab officials who had gathered in Beirut last week said that if the Administration wants to keep its war on terror rolling, the U.S. had better intervene soon--and that, in Arab eyes, means leaning hard on Sharon. Diplomats in the region reacted furiously to Israel's decision to launch its assault on Arafat just as news of the historic Arab offer to normalize relations with Israel broke. On Friday officials from Morocco to Saudi Arabia implored the White House to put the brakes on Sharon's tanks. "People are extremely angry," says one Arab diplomat. "The perception is that the U.S. is giving, if not a green light, then an amber light." The Arabs continue to condition support for an attack on Iraq on American-led progress toward a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, a demand Vice President Dick Cheney heard repeatedly on his swing through the region last month. "If the U.S. is worried about Iraq, forget it," says one diplomat. "In the war on terror, the U.S. needs the support of the Arab world. There is linkage whether they like it or not."

Yet despite such warnings, the Administration last week began to retreat from its brief flirtation with full engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his remarks Saturday, Bush lined up behind Sharon and effectively equated the Israeli fight against terror with America's war against al-Qaeda. Washington's refusal to speak out against Sharon's moves suggested that hard-liners like Cheney, who on past occasions have argued that the U.S. should give Sharon a free hand to take care of Israel's terrorism problem, have taken back control over the Administration's Middle East policy.

Disengagement could jeopardize Arab support for America's war on terror, but the Administration feels burned already. Last week's violence was particularly embarrassing for Cheney, a reluctant peace broker who nonetheless willed himself into the fracas--first by offering to meet Arafat if he agreed to a few conditions and then by privately asking Sharon to allow Arafat to travel to Beirut, only to be turned down by both. That has left the dirty work to Powell, who spent last week fielding calls from Arafat's bunker and soothing Arab and European leaders irate with Israel's actions.

Administration officials say they're not giving up: Zinni remains in the region, still trying to broker a cease-fire. Beyond that, the prevailing U.S. impulse is to wait out the fighting, on the assumption that the two sides should bloody each other into a kind of mutual submission before the U.S. intervenes again. But over the past 18 months, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have shown much willingness to give in, which has left the U.S. watching helplessly as the conflict has exploded beyond control. "What else can we do?" asks one frustrated White House aide. "What other course can the President take?" If things get worse--and there's every reason to believe they will--Bush will be forced to find some answers. --With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, James Carney and John F. Dickerson/Washington, Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem, Scott MacLeod/Beirut, Amany Radwan/Cairo and Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, James Carney and John F. Dickerson/Washington, Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem, Scott MacLeod/Beirut, Amany Radwan/Cairo and Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem