Sheikh Ahmad Yassin) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Intifada’s
terror efforts against the Israeli population centered on two main ar-
eas. First, provocateurs paid by the PLO got large mobs to assemble
daily, stoning Israeli cars and attacking Israeli civilians. Often it was
ensured that international media outlets were made privy to forth-
coming events so as to maximize media coverage. Second, against
the general background of the unrest, numerous deliberate attacks
were made, sometimes in remote areas, against Israeli civilians. The
nature of the terror attacks varied, but they could mostly be described
as “local initiatives” that did not require a central planning apparatus.
An example is the Bus 405 slaughter of 6 July 1988, in which 14 pas-
sengers were killed when an Arab assaulted the driver as the bus was
driving by the edge of a cliff.
In 1993 Israel concluded the Oslo Accords with the PLO, a series
of understandings on mutual recognition, cessation of violence, and
the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). One of PA’s obliga-
tions, as stated in the Oslo Accords, was the prevention of Palestin-
ian terror against Israel. At first the PA carried out its obligations in
accordance with the agreement, and it transformed the Intifada in-
frastructure into a government-like apparatus. However, periodi-
cally in the years after 1993, waves of Palestinian attacks took
place. The PA quickly acted against the perpetrators, but it did not
arrest the leadership of the terror movements. This sparked suspi-
cion in some members of the Israeli public regarding the timing of
the attacks: many waves were launched when the inevitable Israeli
reaction might benefit some Palestinian aim during negotiations.
Numerous documented instances of incitement against Jews and Is-
raelis in official PA-controlled media, schools, and mosques like-
wise indicated PA complicity in the terror.
In autumn 2000 the second (Al-Aqsa) Intifada began. The Pales-
tinians still accuse Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli opposition leader, of
provoking this uprising through a visit to the politically sensitive Al-
Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount with a large group of Israelis,
while Israel claims that the PA started it intentionally to improve the
Palestinian position at the negotiating table after the failure of the
Camp David talks that summer. This Intifada yielded more than 100
suicide bombings in Israel, mainly targeting city buses, restaurants,
and open-air gathering places and killing more than 300 civilians.TERRORISM• 28706-102 (04) Q-Z.qxd 3/24/06 7:26 AM Page 287