The suicide bombs are not about achieving a Palestinian state, they are about driving the Jews into the sea. Even in war zones, ordinary life must go on. But there is little ordinary in Jerusalem and Ramallah, as Deaglán de Breadún discovered this week.
Fear is everywhere. Just after the bombing on Thursday in downtown Jerusalem, when only mad dogs and reporters should be out and about, a woman is shepherding her two small children along Jaffa Street. How she came to be here I do not know, and from her panicky demeanour she does not seem to know either.
Out of the corner of her eye she spots me, as we all wait at a traffic light. She looks, she stares, her eyes pierce me like a knife. Her unspoken question: Are YOU a suicide bomber?
I smile and try to convey by my body language that I am a total innocent. Israel advises journalists to look like journalists: what does a journalist look like? One scream from her - "He's got a bomb!" - and one wonders what would happen.
Smiling is no good anyway. Eyewitnesses state that the suicide bombers often smile - a strange sort of smile admittedly - when they are about to complete their deadly mission. Whether this is a tactic, to put onlookers at ease, or some kind of perverse joy at the imminent prospect of vengeance and subsequent heavenly bliss, is not entirely clear.
The suicide bombs are not about achieving a Palestinian state, side by side with Israel. They are about driving the Jews into the sea, destroying the Israeli state and taking back the land from which the Palestinians fled in 1948.
On the way to Ramallah to meet Arafat, there's an Israeli checkpoint. Happily I am wearing a flak jacket.
The Palestinians who wait beside me have no such luxury. A friendly Palestinian man in his early 30s asks where I am from and what my country's government thinks of the situation.
"They are disturbed," I reply.
"It's not enough," he says.
He inclines his head towards the Israeli soldiers: "What the Nazis did to them, they are doing to us."
At last we are signalled through. It is dark at this stage and everyone walks at a kind of half-trot. A light plays over us as we make our way through the dust and stones at the side of the road. My Palestinian friend kindly takes one of my bags but then there is the crack of a rifle-shot.
"They are shooting, they are shooting!"
We hit the ground, but there are no more shots and we decide to continue. Unknown to us, at the other end of the checkpoint, which is a very large one that extends for about 100 metres, a large crowd of Palestinians has gathered and some of them appear to be taunting the soldiers. The shot was presumably fired over their heads. They are unarmed, but a gunman could suddenly appear in their midst and take a potshot.
Delayed by the checkpoint, I am now rushing to catch a press conference Arafat is holding in Ramallah with the US peace envoy, GenAnthony Zinni. I get through the first two layers of security at his headquarters but a young soldier finally bars the way. He is concerned I might be an Israeli. Anyway, the press conference is over so I decide to go to the hotel.
Arafat's complex in Ramallah is extensive and, at night, strangely resembles a cathedral. Two days later I am back there. The President is meeting a Norwegian socialist group and I might be able to get in on their coat-tails.
An aide points out the guest house for foreign visitors which has been destroyed by Israeli missiles. Helicopters used to land in the square beside the house and the visitor could just walk to his or her room.
Farmleigh it wasn't but it looked as if had been rather nice, with pleasant red tiles on the roof. Another building only 20 metres from Arafat's office was also attacked.
My guide explains that the Israelis were sending a message, "See how easily we can kill you if we want."
Bless those Norwegians, they finished their meeting in time for me to get in and see Arafat. The President is smiling and gracious. He insists on speaking his idiosyncratic but effective form of English. After we cover the diplomatic and political issues, he recites a list of alleged misdeeds by the Israeli security forces (the interview was published in last Monday's paper). His personal photographer is on hand . It is reminiscent of certain Irish politicians.
We stand in front of a large poster featuring the Dome of the Rock, the famous and stunningly beautiful Jerusalem mosque at the centre of the current conflict.
The Dome of the Rock features in the background of the cheap wall posters all over Ramallah, showing the faces of the young "martyrs" who have died in recent weeks. None of them is over 25 years, some are young children. At the start of the present Intifada (uprising) none of them was armed but many now stand proudly wielding a Kalashnikov. Indeed all over Ramallah at this stage there were men with Kalashnikovs patrolling the streets.
I had been to the al-Amari refugee camp outside Ramallah before, at a time when the biggest problem was the Israeli security blockade .
Since then the camp people have been to hell and back. It was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in recent weeks, with heavy casualties among the Palestinians. It is a miserable ghetto, like the poorest place you ever saw in Ireland in the bad old days. The people do not live in tents but in primitive stone structures.
All over Ramallah are the remains of cars that were flattened by the Israeli tanks during the recent incursion. There is no such thing as insurance, I am told.
Ramallah's narrow streets were not built with tanks in mind: an old woman tells me how a tank demolished the front of her house as it passed along. Her neighbour, a man of about 35, hobbles past on crutches. He shows me where his knee was shattered by a bullet. "Whoosh!" he says, indicating how the bullet disintegrated when it entered his leg.
But the Palestinians have no monopoly on suffering. The ordinary Israeli working people are being hit hard. Rich folk don't tend to travel on buses. Sadly, one of the victims in the bus-bomb in northern Israel last Wednesday was visiting the family of another bomb victim.
The shops where people died in downtown Jerusalem on Thursday were not Tiffany's or Harrods but modest little places where humble people buy their daily necessities. Given all that has happened you would think nobody would be taking buses or going downtown to shop.
But they do: last Monday I saw people queuing at a bus-stop where a suicide bomber had blown himself up only the evening before.
Even in the war zone, life has to go on.