'Her Name Was Aida'".(Brief Article)

The busiest place in Ramallah these days is a parched slope on the city's outskirts, just beneath the Jewish settlement of Psigot. Here, in a new extension of the Al Bira Cemetery, Palestinian families gather through the day around 150 marble tombstones that mark the graves of victims of the Intifada. Leading a visitor past polished slabs inscribed in Arabic, Hassan Jaffarey, 55, the gravedigger who has buried every one of the dead, points out some of the newer arrivals: the 9-year-old shot by Israeli snipers in his parents' home, the housewife caught in crossfire between soldiers in Psigot and militants in Ramallah. "That one was an electrician," he notes, gesturing to a photograph of a handsome man taped to a newly laid gravestone. "The soldiers thought he had a gun, but it was only a power drill. They shot him in the head." Ducking beneath the meager shade of a cypress tree, Jaffarey mops the sweat from his brow. "When I do this work, it brings me sorrow," he says. "But I get a lot of credit from God."

There will likely be plenty more heavenly credit in the coming months. Last week Jaffarey finished digging plots for two more victims: a 54- year old housewife and a member of Yasir Arafat's elite presidential guard. Both had died in a missile attack on Palestinian Authority installations by Israeli helicopter gunships in retaliation for a string of suicide bombings. The strikes, which devastated living quarters, offices, arsenals and a storage depot used by Arafat's bodyguards, were meant as a clear message to the Palestinian leader from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: curb the violence or risk further destruction. But Islamic militants vowed revenge, and Israeli reaction to the military operation was more skepticism than solidarity. Yossi Sarid, chairman of Israel's left wing Meretz Party, called the assault "a pathetic repeat of what Ehud Barak did [that] has no effect against terror." Meanwhile at the Al Bira Cemetery, Jaffarey was preparing for more bloodshed. "After all these deaths there can be no peace," he said, shoveling earth over a plain coffin draped in Hamas flags.

For now, Israel is placing its bets on confrontation. Its principal target: Force 17, a 3,500-man security outfit built by Arafat and his henchmen in Lebanon in the 1970s and now responsible both for guarding the Palestinian leader and preserving internal stability. Israel intelligence sources claim that the force has carried out several hits against Israeli targets in the West Bank--including the murder of two security guards in east Jerusalem last October and the sniper killing near Nablus of Binyamin Kahane, son of the late militant rabbi Meir Kahane. Israeli officials also told NEWSWEEK that Force 17 has operated in tandem with Hamas demolitions experts to set up roadside bombs around Jerusalem and Ramallah. The key player: Mahmoud Damarah, Arafat's longtime bodyguard, who runs Force 17 in Ramallah and also ...