On the jittery streets of Jerusalem and Gaza City, Israelis and Palestinians are agreed about one thing - a 'mega-attack' is only a matter of time. Nuala Haughey reports
Each ambulance siren that wails through Jerusalem's hilly streets prompts the question: has it happened? Has Islamic militant group Hamas exacted its bloody revenge for the slaying last Monday of its founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin? Few here doubt that the inevitable bloodletting will be anything less than huge, for on it rests the honour of Hamas, an organisation dedicated to wiping out Israel. Israelis are bracing themselves for what they call in Hebrew a mega pigua - a mega-attack.
A jittery quiet has descended on this biblical land in the days since Israel's dawn missile strike outside a Gaza City mosque dispatched the 68-year-old quadriplegic Hamas cleric and his entourage to eternal "martyrdom".
Many city streets were deserted early in the week: in Gaza and the West Bank because of a three-day mourning period, in Israel because of fear of revenge attacks. Emergency counselling telephone lines in Israel reported that they were inundated with anxious callers.
Israel went into a high state of alert, beefing up security for public figures and imposing "closure" on Palestinian residents of the territories. By midweek, the Israeli press reported that security agencies had received more than 50 warnings of impending terrorist attacks.
On Thursday, stallholders in the Mahane Yehuda market in Jewish west Jerusalem, the scene of attacks in the past, were bemoaning the dearth of customers who would normally be stocking up for the Sabbath as well as the imminent Passover holiday.
"People are leery, they are worried. I think that's natural, but they go about their lives," said a middle-aged woman from Washington DC, who moved to Israel three years ago. "If we don't come out then they're winning. I mean, this is our country, they are not going to stop us. I think people will die no matter what, and if you are afraid to come out you are letting them win."
The woman hesitated when asked whether she supported the attack on a man reviled by Israelis as the face of terrorism and revered by Palestinians as the embodiment of resistance.
"I don't know whether it was the right decision or not," she replied. "He was not a good man and he was not a good man for the Palestinians as far as I'm concerned. He's not innocent by any means and Israel needs to defend itself."
The strike enraged the entire Arab world and Israel's premier, Ariel Sharon, faced harsh criticism throughout the world (with the not unexpected exception of the US and Australia) for the attack, branded an extra-judicial assassination. But an opinion poll in the leading Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, showed strong domestic support for the strike. It gave an insight into the mentality of a nation born of warfare, surrounded by hostile states and sustained by the power of the gun, many of whose citizens still feel that you have to kill your enemy before he kills you.
Sixty per cent of Israelis supported the killing, according to the poll, while only 3 per cent expected it to reduce terrorism. Eighty-one per cent said that terror would increase as a result. In other words, a majority of Israel's citizens supported a measure that they believed would increase terror.
Israelis are all too familiar with the financial cost of such actions. The Tel Aviv stock exchange took a hit and the tourist industry - shaky at the best of times - predicted a loss of 350,000 visitors this year. Spain's Valencia basketball team cancelled its scheduled visit, announcing that its players were afraid to play against Maccabi Tel Aviv on Thursday night.
CNN broadcaster Larry King pulled out of a trip and there were doubts that a scheduled performance by Madonna and a visit from on-screen tough guy and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would go ahead.
On Jaffa Road, the main artery in downtown west Jerusalem, Vladi (24), a university student, was waiting for a bus on Thursday afternoon, smoking a cigarette and listening to music on his CD player. Despite the fact that buses are often targeted by Palestinian suicide bombers, the Ukraine-born immigrant was not afraid to use public transport.
"You can't stop to live because of all the madness that happens here," he said. While opposed to the controversial presence of settlers and the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, Vladi said he supported the killing of Sheikh Yassin, whom he referred to as "the devil himself, who ordered people to kill".
Israel says Yassin personally authorised Hamas suicide attacks and accuses the organisation's military wing of being responsible for murdering 377 Israeli civilians and soldiers since the outbreak of the current Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation in September 2000.
"It's a good thing that he was killed," said Vladi. "I know that it will affect the situation inside Israel and outside Israel. It's more complicated because the Jewish community have not the same security as here, but these things must be done. It's simple like this."
In the teeming coastal enclave of 1.3 million stateless Palestinians that is the Gaza Strip, it is also fairly simple. Hamas and other armed Islamic militant groups have no trouble attracting youths willing to die in suicide missions, carry out attacks on Jewish settlers or engage in futile clashes with heavily armed Israeli troops.
Some 200,000 angry people took to the dusty littered streets of Gaza City for Sheikh Yassin's funeral on Monday, swearing vengeance. Locals said all baby boys born that day in the city's main hospital were named after him. At Yassin's huge funeral tent, almost feral little boys with stained teeth waved Hamas flags and marched alongside the armed resistance fighters in fatigues and balaclavas.
"The people here now are full of wrath," said Amjad Abu Karesh, a 30-year-old construction worker from Gaza City. "The people just want revenge. Especially, we would like to see them target Sharon."
As he spoke, a boy aged six or seven, dressed in fatigues and wearing a green Hamas headband, was among dozens jostling to hear. The older ones pitched in too, parroting the fighting words of the grown-ups and vowing apocalyptic vengeance.
"Insh Allah [God willing], we will assassinate the big Israeli leaders," they chorused.
For most of these children, this dirty and impoverished 140-square-mile rectangle of land fenced off from Israel is all the world they know. To them, the Jews are the people living in the distant settlement whose security needs dictate that their family's greenhouse is bulldozed. The only Israelis they interact with are encased in tanks or behind the barrel of a gun. Almost daily, they hear the roar of overhead Israeli fighter jets.
Yassin's death raised the death toll since the start of the intifada to 3,828, including 2,874 Palestinians and 886 Israelis. So, for every Israeli civilian or soldier killed, three Palestinians have died. Palestinians say that at least 326 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's "targeted" assassination attacks. Of these, 160 were innocent bystanders, including 25 women and 36 children.
While 70 leading Palestinian public figures this week signed an unprecedented petition urging restraint, Hamas's military wing released a videotape to the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV station vowing "a strong, earth-shaking response to make the sons of monkeys and pigs taste a painful death".
As for the already moribund peace process, many suspect it was buried along with the Sheikh last Monday in a fresh Gaza grave.