Marco DiLauro / Getty

When Israeli bulldozers razed the Ramallah compound, Palestinians took to the streets.

he Israeli army siege of Yasser Arafat’s compound showed all the reasons why, after two long years, the Palestinian uprising—and the Palestinian leader—remains alive.

Since late June, Ramallah has endured on-again, off-again curfews, sporadically enforced by patrolling tanks and jeeps. Encircled, impoverished and in mourning, Palestinians are simply tired. The people of Ramallah have been worrying about their children—who had already spent half of the school year locked in their homes—not thinking about Yasser Arafat.

But when two suicide bombers killed seven Israelis over two days, breaking a six-week lull in armed Palestinian attacks, the public tensed. On September 19, 30 Israeli army tanks and armored cars surrounded Ramallah’s central government compound. Bulldozers moved in and began to chip away at the structures left standing in previous invasions. The operation was dubbed, “A Matter of Time,” implying the goal that sooner or later the Palestinian leader would submit.

Israel was demanding that Palestinians on its wanted list, who it said were inside the compound, turn themselves in. But the real goal, according to Israeli writer Amos Harel, was to make the Palestinian leader miserable. “Arafat will be stuck in a stinking, dirty hole,” a senior military official told him. Taking that one step further, Palestinian officials suspect Ariel Sharon’s goal was to rid himself of Arafat altogether by provoking either his voluntary departure to the Gaza Strip, or his handover of the wanted men, both of which would have been political suicide for the beleaguered leader.

Arafat’s political standing was already on shaky ground. In recent weeks, his Fatah faction had been torn by disputes over how the group could best lead the Palestinian mainstream out of international isolation. Those divisions, between the old guard and a new leadership clamoring to be heard, rose to the surface in uncharacteristic public disputes: first, over a Fatah plan to stop attacks on Israeli civilians, then over the president’s appointed cabinet. The cabinet, when faced with the prospect of being voted out by a Fatah-controlled legislature, resigned en masse—but not before Arafat was forced to commit to new elections on January 20.

Those pressuring Arafat to let new leadership take over, commence real dialogue between the many Palestinian factions and reassess the strategies of the intifada were still a minority. But they were an influential minority. One Fatah member and former minister had been so audacious as to write a confessional letter in the government-controlled newspaper. “Mister president,” it read. “We committed serious mistakes against our people, our authority and our dream of statehood. To make up for these mistakes, we must confess to our failure first, and then take immediate action.”

But the attack on the Ramallah compound arrested that internal debate. “We will not accept anyone to replace Arafat,” Fatah announced in a leaflet. “Palestine is not Afghanistan, and Israel and the United States will find here no Karzai.”

he Israeli government was not interested in the slow process of a declining Arafat; it wanted him to bow his head. And so the demolition crews slowly released their payload around the government offices. “They were the kind of explosions where you would have to open your eyes and make sure you are standing to see whether the bomb was in the room with you, or just next door,” said one official who was in the building.

By late Saturday, September 21, the only structure left whole was the building where Arafat, his advisers and some 200 others were holed up. The digging machines were now pecking away at its corners. “I felt really there was a danger in the evening,” recalls finance minister Salam Fayyad, speaking by phone from the compound. “That is not to say that we are out of danger now, but it was very serious.”

Just around midnight, the Israeli army began announcing through bullhorns that demolition was imminent and those inside must come out. It seemed an impossible situation. Palestinian officials were furiously making contacts with diplomats all over the world. The main Arabic satellite channel, al-Jazeera, carried live coverage of the minutes ticking by and the pleas from inside the compound.

But in Ramallah, the streets were coming alive. Down in the valley, mosque loudspeakers beckoned, “Come out. Come out of your houses.” Church bells rang. One crowd of young men beating a pot moved up through the city center, calling on residents to break the Israeli curfew. There were demonstrations that night in every Palestinian town and even some villages. Groups of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails clashed with guards in protest. While the demonstrations in the Gaza Strip numbered in the tens of thousands, and crackled with Palestinian gunshots fired in the air, those in West Bank cities were loud with car horns, not bullets. Four Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire that night (a week into the invasion, the death toll stood at 39).

The next day, the Ramallah compound still stood. Even if that wasn’t because of the protests, those inside were grateful for the surprising defiance. “It was not to be expected,” admitted Fayyad, who watched the protests on television as he sat next to Arafat. “These people have been going through a lot, and to see them going out and breaking the curfew—that was a very humbling thing.”

Arafat remains inside the compound, although the bulldozers have backed away. Observers and officials are expecting a long stand-off. But in some strange way, this encirclement of their non-too-popular leader has revived Palestinians. They are now returning the favor. “I think that Arafat’s popularity is going to rise,” says analyst Ali Jarbawi. “When faced by the Israelis and Americans, Arafat becomes an issue of national pride. When that ultimatum came out, the people had had enough.”