Returning to the Underground (washingtonpost.com): ...Already, Fatah operatives are meeting and plotting across the West Bank, even in towns where Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers, snipers and patrols enforce strict curfews, Palestinians say. But al-Aqsa Brigades members, the action-oriented gunmen who number in the thousands, are on the run. They are among the main targets of Israeli military sweeps and have less opportunity to reorganize.

Ah.

So attacks are likely to be more hit and run than before. Which is saying something, really. It will be fascinating to see what the response of the US and Israel will be if/when Fatah officially returns to terrorism as modus vivendi. To say nothing of what the other Arab countries will do in response to the response, so to speak.

Her nails manicured and hair pulled from her face, the Palestinian woman asks that she be called by an Arabic name for a faint star — Suha. She talks about her decision to be a suicide bomber. "About the explosive belt," she says, leaning forward, "when you want to carry out such an attack, whether you are a man or a woman, you don't think about the explosive belt or about your body being ripped into pieces. We are suffering. We are dying while we are still alive." Israelis suspect they will see "more female suicide bombers than male." [...] Escorted into the room by a grim-looking bodyguard, Suha pauses to exchange giggling pleasantries with two Palestinian women who are there to greet her as she enters. Nervous about the interview and a bit self-conscious, she plops down in an overstuffed easy chair and leans forward with her elbows on her knees to begin answering questions. She says she was born in Kuwait, but she and her family now live in the West Bank. She declines to say where. She says she is the eldest of nine children, has an undergraduate degree in social science from An-Najah University in Nablus and did clerical work for a media research company. She says she never married and has no children.

You know, it's fascinating how consistently, across cultures, revolutionaries tend to be middle and upper class educated individuals, doing things in the name of the lower-class poorer People!

In the meantime, it appears as though Sharon may have been involved in election campaign fraud. How very .... petty. I wonder how long it will be before the Palestinians and the Israeli opposition raise the concept that this punitive expedition into the West Bank was meant as a sort of distraction, something to keep people from noticing that the investigation had landed on him.

And Amnesty International is accusing Israel of war crimes ... most of which have already been admitted, in one way or another. For example, since Israel was after terrorists hiding among the civilians, they most certainly didn't give civilians any chance to flee; the "degrading treatment" was entered into with great enthusiasm, and is in fact more or less ongoing; they couldn't very well have "protected" the people they were, in fact, attacking, and the soldiers have already admitted to the press and public that they used Palestinians as human shields. (I note that apparently trying to kill the press is not a war crime. The press will not be amused.) Of course, nothing will come of this. The concept that Israel would, at this point in time, submit any of its soldiers to be tried by that bright shiny new International Criminal Court is utterly laughable. The Palestinian propaganda coup will be incalculable.