Free And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East by Richard Engel

Palestinians—even though by that point some forty Palestinian political and paramilitary leaders had been assassinated without trial.
    I was twenty-seven years old, still feeling young and invincible, as many young men do when they first earn the right to call themselves “war correspondents.” Even so, the wave of random and violent attacks caused me to change the way I lived. Instead of leisurely strolls in the market across the street, I shopped quicklyand purposefully. I began sitting in the rear of cafés, my back against the wall, because suicide bombers usually detonated their devices at entrances.
    The peace process took its last breath, at least for a generation, in the spring of 2002. On March 27, in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya, a Palestinian suicide bomber disguised as a woman walked into a hotel dining room during the annual Passover seder. He detonated a suitcase filled with powerful explosives, killing 30 and wounding 140. Many of the victims were elderly, and some were Holocaust survivors. It was the highest death toll of Israelis during the Second Intifada.
    Israel responded with Operation Defensive Shield, the largest military operation in the West Bank since the Six-Day War. The Israel Defense Forces began by putting Yasser Arafat under siege in his Ramallah compound, then invaded Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Bethlehem, Jenin, and Nablus. The Israelis captured every city in the West Bank except tiny Jericho. The A-B-C administrative districts were scrapped. In effect, the entire West Bank became a C area, and the gradual shift to Palestinian control came to an abrupt end. During Defensive Shield, according to the UN, 30 Israeli soldiers were killed and 127 wounded; Palestinian fatalities were put at 497, with 1,447 wounded.
    Yasser Arafat was confined to his compound from the start of the Israeli incursion until May 2, when he was released in a deal brokered by the United States. He was greeted by cheering crowds. A diminutive figure (five feet two inches) with splotchy skin, Arafat had been much beloved by Palestinians, not only because he was a symbol of their cause but also because he was a prodigious fund-raiser. He traveled widely and usually returned with satchels of money. He spoke English quite badly, but loved to speak itanyway. He was gregarious and emotional and enjoyed meeting with journalists. He liked people and frequently embraced them and kissed them. I was kissed on the cheek by Arafat several times.
    Arafat himself was never the same after his captivity in his compound. I think he had a nervous breakdown. He became much more aggressive, wore fatigues, and called himself General Arafat. He no longer met freely with journalists. He did phone interviews with CNN and a few other news outlets, hanging up if a journalist said something that offended him. He was angry and incoherent, and I suspect he was suffering from some form of dementia. His Palestinian Authority had been severely weakened, creating a vacuum filled by Hamas and other radical groups.
    By this time I had left AFP and was doing freelance television work for ABC affiliates and the BBC World Service, as well as radio stories for The World , a coproduction of Public Radio International and WGBH in Boston. Newspapers and magazines were struggling, and I thought I’d have a longer and more lucrative career in television. AFP was stingy about covering the cost of the gas I needed to get around for work, while TV correspondents were chartering planes. I thought to myself, Now that’s the world I’d rather be part of. I arrived in Jerusalem expecting to report on the birth of a new state, Palestine, instead I saw peace talks collapse, Sharon capitalize on their failure, walk through Muslim areas on top of the Temple Mount, and start a bloody conflict of stones, tanks, and suicide bombers. But unlike the First Intifada, the outside world, especially the United States, paid little attention to the Palestinians’ second uprising. It