It was like a scene from the sequel to the 1982 block-buster The Siege of Beirut, starring Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat: the Palestinian leader with his back to the wall, ducking shells as Israeli tanks advanced on his headquarters, already deliberately targeted and damaged by rocket-firing Apache helicopters and F16 fighters on the orders of his old adversary, Sharon. The same actors, the same human emotions, only the location and the roles are slightly changed in The Siege II.
It might have resembled Beirut under siege, but this was Ramallah on the West Bank, politically independent by international agreement, and ruled by a Palestinian National Authority. Mr Arafat is no longer — or so he claims — the guerrilla leader going by the nom de guerre of “Abu Ammar” but, until 48 hours earlier, a respected president of an entity that passed, even in America’s eyes, for an embryonic legitimate state.
Mr Sharon is no longer “Arik” — or the mad deer. No longer General Sharon whose army occupies Beirut, but a democratically elected prime minister of the only western style democracy in the region, who, until 48 hours earlier had been distrusted by the West and was about to get an earful in Washington for not dancing to the United State’s tune.

Read the full story in the January 2002 edition of The Middle East Magazine

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