If you must live on the West Bank, don't get a house next door to Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation. A middle-aged Palestinian man on Sharafa Street, in the town of Ramallah, owns such a property and yesterday he was outside on the footpath looking at what an Israeli rocket had done to his home.
Not unnaturally, Mr Al-Aziz looked bewildered. Neighbours came up to shake his hand and offer consolation. He was at home at 10.45 p.m. on Monday night when Israeli helicopters roared in for an attack on the Fatah office along with other Fatah buildings on the West Bank.
Sorry, make that 10.44 p.m. when he was at home getting ready for bed. By 10.45 he was outside and that is probably the reason he is still alive. It is believed the first two missiles hit the Fatah office, but a third struck the Al-Aziz residence, a detached twostorey stone building. The porch over the doorway was damaged and one corner of the house simply disappeared.
The windows in two large houses across the street were shattered by the explosions and now, through the empty frames, residents were watching the crowd in the street below. Mr Al-Aziz works as a driver with the equivalent of the local council but a neighbour stresses that this has no relationship with what he terms "the politic". It's just his job.
The Fatah office, of course, is connected with "the politic" and they paid the price on Monday night. Once a private place, the wall of the lavatory had been demolished by the blast leaving the toilet bowl exposed to public scrutiny. No bigger than a corner sweetshop, the corrugated roof of the building had been knocked to the ground and there was rubble everywhere.
Fatah is best described as a politicised paramilitary organisation and the local members, poorly-dressed young men in their 20s sat on a bench in the ruins trying to make sense of it all. They were too stunned to pick up the Palestinian flag which lay crumpled on a pile of stones and dust but someone had made sure to hang a portrait of Mr Arafat over the shattered doorway.
A youngster rolled his eyes to heaven: look what they have done to us now. A man with a moustache, drawing heavily on a cigarette, told how machine-gun fire alerted him that something was up.
He and his friends got out before the missiles struck. He had the presence of mind to note the exact time of the attack.
They don't hang about in Ramallah. Already the builders were at work with jackhammers restoring the damage. I asked a Fatah member if this was going to stop the Palestinian Intifada. He said it would not. "It will make it more stronger."
The truth of this was borne out by the scene at an Israeli army checkpoint about a mile away. With suicidal determination, youths hurled stones at jeeps containing Israeli soldiers. Tyres were set on fire and a Palestinian flag waved amid the smoke. Ambulances were at the ready nearby. They did not have long to wait as a youth was shot and had to be stretchered away.
It was a scene from hell. The air resounded with the popping sound of rubber bullets being fired. Soon the crack of rifle fire from Israeli snipers could be heard. Young Palestinians mocked their older brothers who took shelter. Heedless of the risk, the youngsters laughed and fired imaginary weapons at their more prudent seniors.
Tension was high in Jerusalem also. The Israeli attacks were in part a response to the brutal killing of a security guard at a welfare office in the city.
As I drove along the dividing line between Palestinian and Israeli districts, a heavy-set Israeli man in the next lane jumped out of his car and, heedless of the traffic, ran across the road to protect some of his fellow-Jews who had got into a fracas with Arabs.
His reckless courage and impassioned concern for his co-religionists were typical of the Middle East, where bravery is as plentiful as wisdom is scarce these days.