A series of horrific terror attacks were carried out over the next several weeks — including two gunmen opening fire on a bus stop, which killed two and wounded injured dozens more; suicide bombings in a pedestrian mall in Jerusalem and two others in Haifa; and a bomb and gunfire attack on a bus. After Israeli Minister of Tourism Rehavam Ze'evi was assassinated, and more than 30 other Israelis were murdered and several hundred were wounded, Israel’s new Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, declared Arafat “irrelevant” and, on December 22, 2001, sent troops into his headquarters in Ramallah to confine him to his office. Sharon said that Arafat would remain isolated until the killers of Ze'evi were arrested and extradited to Israel. Arafat refused and appealed to the international community to pressure Israel to end its siege.
The level of violence continued to escalate while Arafat ignored repeated warnings from the Bush Administration to take steps to prevent attacks against Israelis. By mid-2002, President Bush was convinced that Arafat was deeply involved in directing terror, and concluded that the only hope for achieving progress in the peace process was for the Palestinians to find a new leader.
Not only the Americans had soured on Arafat. Palestinian youths became increasingly disillusioned by what they perceived as the plodding dictatorial and corrupt nature of the PLO, and Arafat's failure to deliver on his promise to liberate Palestine. Many of these Palestinians turned to the Muslim fundamentalist organizations, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which never accepted the Oslo accords, and remained committed to the use of terror to drive the Israelis out of all of “Palestine.”
Under pressure from the United States, Arafat did periodically take steps against the violence, condemning attacks and arresting low-level terrorists. The problem was that his condemnations were typically in English and couched in equivocations that accused Israel of terrorism as well. In Arabic, he would call for a jihad against Israel and a million martyrs to liberate Jerusalem. The men he arrested were also released after a few weeks or months, and many subsequently committed acts of terror. Israel’s view was that Arafat either could stop the violence and chose not to, or had no control over militant Palestinians. In either case, they said it made no sense to negotiate with him since the result was the same — violence.
Sharon’s view that Arafat directed the terror was given greater credence in early January 2002, when Israeli forces stopped a ship, the Karine-A, bound for the
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