Isolated Arafat marks his comeback

In a totally unexpected move, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Abou Mazen, resigned.

The move which many say took place under implicit pressure from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat meant that the old Palestinian leader would score a comeback.

As a matter of fact, Arafat proved that he still plays by the rules of the game, and in style. He appointed the head of the Legislative Council, Ahmed Qorei, a closer associate to Arafat than Abbas.

Meanwhile, Israelis stepped up their pressure on Palestinian groups and factions. In Gazza, several so-called targeted assassination attempted at the lives of different leaders of the Islamic strong group, Hamas.

These attempts were topped by an Israeli helicopter targeting with a couple of missile the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

To her bad luck, Israel failed in some four attempts to take out the lives of figures of the top echelon of Hamas.

But this Israeli escalation did not mean that Palestinians would remain silent.

Apart from separated incidents of drive-by shootings, Palestinian fighters succeeded in carrying two suicide-operations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem inflicting heavy losses on the Israelis.

These losses reached more than 16 dead citizens and more than 90 wounded. Amid this turbulence, and the American failure to reign its Middle Eastern ally, the Zionist state, violence continued.

The Israeli responded by threatening to expel Arafat out of Palestine or to liquidate him. The Israeli decision was met by popular Palestinian opposition as supporters of Arafat took to the streets and surrounded his residence in a sign of support and defiance of the Israelis.

To these supporters, an old and tired Arafat showed up and with shaky hand he sent them his greetings and kisses.

As events unfolded, observers speculated that the Israeli would lower their tune after a fast beat of violence and counter-violence resulted only in more bloodshed.