Peres, known for his preoccupation with defense issues, has never experienced battle. Throughout his career, he has never been under mortar and rocket fire. He lives in a bubble, like a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who has an algebraic formula that nobody understands - the essence of which is that one must not get hysterical, one must be steadfast. Theoretically, everyone agrees with it and admires his wisdom, certainly in Paris and in other world capitals. But when he demands that Sderot residents not panic, he proves just how cut off he is from the people. Preaching that people should not panic or get hysterical is justified, but the question is, why should Sderot have to play the role of a second Massada? Is it a military post or something? Is it an illegal settlement outpost? Is it in occupied territory?

The moment the Israel Defense Forces evacuated Gaza and its Jewish settlements, in which a third generation of settlers lived, and handed the territory over to the Palestinians, the firing of Qassams should have stopped immediately, if only to encourage Israel to continue to withdraw. The expectations that the Palestinians would rapidly construct multistory buildings in the evacuated territories to house refugees and create an atmosphere of progress were dashed. Instead, the liberated territories turned into a firing base. The increased bombardment of Israeli territory is the last thing that Israeli peace-seekers expected following the beginning of the end of the occupation and the separation from the dream of the greater land of Israel.

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The firing of hundreds of Qassams into Israel is not only annoying; it is also unwise. Not only does this not serve the Palestinians, it also strengthens Israeli opponents of evacuating most of the territories. The Qassam launches, which have made the lives of Sderot residents hell, may derive from rivalry among the terror organizations, or from a desire to get rid of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). If so, they do not need our services as mediators. There is no political logic to the Qassam fire; it has one sole aim: to kill Israeli civilians because they are Israelis. Only a miracle from heaven and technical flaws in the rockets have prevented mass slaughter in Sderot. But the very fact that a town in sovereign Israeli territory lives in fear every day is intolerable.

The internecine motives of the war of attrition that the Palestinians have declared on us - whether it is a competition between Hamas and Islamic Jihad or among other organizations - should not interest us. It is the government's obligation to protect its citizens. Over time, harsh responses have been suggested, among them wiping Beit Hanun off the face of the earth. Amram Mitzna, both a dove and a major general, has insisted that for every Qassam, "we have to come down on them with all our might."

The response that Israel has chosen thus far is pinpoint deterrence: Artillery fire at every site from which Qassams are launched, from air, land and sea. Now, pinpoint assassinations have also been added. In this method of response, civilians, women and children are killed by mistake, to a large extent because the terror organizations intentionally operate from within densely populated Palestinian territory, thus endangering their own people. And wonder of wonders: The Palestinians, who are firing exclusively at civilian targets, are raising an outcry, while we are apologizing. The sensitive souls among us are even infuriated at the killing of innocent and blameless Palestinian civilians. And are the inhabitants of Sderot not innocent and blameless? The Palestinians are knowingly and intentionally firing indiscriminately at civilian population centers, while we are looking for those who are doing the firing and expressing regret for killing by mistake.

A Qassam that is fired into the heart of a population center, even if it does not kill anyone, is tantamount to a Qassam that has hit the target and caused a mass slaughter of civilians, and it demands a strong response. The Palestinians should know that if our civilians continue to be targeted indiscriminately, their civilians, too, are liable to become a target. Not in the Peres-Shmeres method, but in the eye for an eye method.

A strong Israeli military response to the assault, claimed by the armed wing of the governing Hamas group and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) as an "earthquake reaction" to recent air strikes that killed 14 Palestinian civilians, seemed likely.

"This was a very serious Hamas terrorist attack," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in broadcast remarks.

"Israel sees the Palestinian Authority headed by Chairman Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) and the Palestinian government responsible for the incident, with all that implies," he said, raising speculation Hamas leaders could be targeted.

Abbas, in a statement, said the raid, near the Kerem Shalom crossing, "violated the national consensus." He called on the international community "to prevent Israel from exploiting the attack to carry out large-scale aggression in the Gaza Strip."

The Israeli military spokesman said seven to eight gunmen infiltrated through a tunnel militants had dug under Israel's border fence near the Kerem Shalom crossing.

"They divided into three cells. One attacked an armored personnel carrier. The APC was empty. Another group attacked a tank with grenades ... causing two deaths and one serious injury. Another two attacked another position with gunfire," the spokesman said.

"Then they returned to Gaza ... We have two dead, three wounded and a soldier that is missing."

Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees said two gunmen were killed.

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A spokesman for Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades said about the missing soldier: "We neither confirm nor deny (we have him)."

Army Radio said Israeli generals had convened to discuss a possible broad ground operation in response to the raid.

Witnesses said that in the aftermath of the gun battle, two Israeli tanks backed by a helicopter crossed into an empty field in the Gaza Strip at the scene of the attack. The army said it was a "limited entry" to search the area.

Israeli air strikes, amid daily cross-border rocket launchings from Gaza, have killed 20 Palestinians in the past two weeks, 14 of them civilians.

Hamas and the PRC said their assault was also in response to the Israeli assassination this month of PRC leader Jamal Abu Samhadana.

Hamas, which heads the Palestinian government, ended a 16-month-old truce with Israel on June 9 after seven members of one Palestinian family were killed on a Gaza beach during a day of heavy Israeli shelling.

Hamas has blamed Israel for those deaths. Israel has denied responsibility.

Hamas, a militant movement sworn to Israel's destruction, came to power in March after winning a parliamentary election in January.

JERUSALEM - For the first time since its leaders took control of the Palestinian government in March, Hamas militants led a sophisticated pre-dawn attack Sunday on an Israeli military outpost along the Gaza border, killing two soldiers and abducting a third.

The raid created the most serious crisis here since Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip last summer.

Israeli tanks almost immediately moved into the fringes of the Gaza Strip, talks between rival Palestinian factions over ending attacks inside Israel fell apart, and Egyptian diplomats worked feverishly to prevent the situation from spinning out of control.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his military leaders warned the Palestinian government that it would be held responsible for the safety of the kidnapped soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19.

"We intend to respond to what happened this morning in such a way that everyone involved will know the price they will pay will be painful, and if the situation does not change, will hurt sevenfold," said Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

It was unclear whether the attack could have taken place without the knowledge of top-level Hamas leaders. Nor was it clear how long the operation had been planned. In taking credit for the attack, militants called it retaliation for several recent Israeli raids, but the Palestinians attacked the Israeli outpost through a 700-yard tunnel that Capt. Noa Meir of the Israel Defense Forces said would have taken months to dig.

The new Hamas-led government urged militants holding Shalit to keep him safe, but stopped short of calling for his release. Israel's Cabinet met late Sunday night to weigh its options and reportedly cleared the way for a possible rescue attempt before staging a wider military assault.

But efforts to free Shalit could be tempered by painful memories of past efforts to rescue kidnapped Israelis. In 1994, another 19-year-old soldier, Israeli-American Nachson Waxman, was kidnapped by Hamas militants and killed five days later during a failed Israeli rescue mission.

Sunday's attack came as Hamas leaders were working out the final details of an agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to halt attacks inside Israel.

Abbas, who leads the more moderate Fatah party, joined Israel in criticizing Hamas for staging the raid just as the two sides were finalizing a deal that would have barred such attacks.

Sunday's attack took place before dawn at an Israeli army outpost near the Kerem Shalom kibbutz, which lies just inside Israel at Gaza's southern end. The kibbutz is about four miles southeast of Rafah and about two miles northeast of the Egyptian border.

Using a tunnel more than a third of a mile long, three teams of Palestinian commandoes surprised soldiers at the outpost with mortars, machine guns and hand grenades.

The tunnel, which began under a Palestinian home 400 yards inside the Gaza Strip, stretched 300 yards into Israel.

At least two of the Palestinian militants were wearing Israeli military uniforms during the assault.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and four others wounded, the Israeli military said.

Two Palestinians were also killed, but five or six others managed to escape back into the Gaza Strip with Shalit, who was seen walking with his captors, the Israeli military said.

The raid - dubbed "Operation Fading Illusion" by the attackers - marked the first time since Hamas took over the Palestinian government that its militant wing has launched such an assault inside Israel. Until this month, Hamas had largely stood by a 16-month cease-fire with Israel as smaller militant groups launched suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis.

But Hamas called off its cease-fire in early June after a series of inflammatory deaths. First, Israel assassinated a top Hamas security official and leading Gaza Strip militant, Jamal Abu Samhadana, in an aerial missile strike. The following day, eight Palestinian civilians out for a day at the beach were killed in an explosion during an Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip coast.

An Israeli military investigation declared that none of its shells hit the Palestinians that afternoon, but the findings are in dispute, and Hamas immediately resumed launching rudimentary rockets into southern Israel.

The Hamas military wing joined Samhadana's Popular Resistance Committees and a new group called the Islamic Army in taking credit for the attack, calling it a response to the recent Israeli attacks, including three botched missile strikes that killed 13 Palestinian civilians in the past two weeks.

"The operation is a natural response to the occupation crimes and massacres against the Palestinian people," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. "Hamas will continue to resist as long as there is occupation."

Sunday's kidnapping was the first since 2000, when three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah forces on Israel's border with Lebanon. Their bodies were returned to Israel four years later as part of a prisoner exchange.

Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondent Cliff Churgin contributed to this report from Jerusalem.

A spokesman of the Islamic Army, calling himself as Abu Muthana, affirmed to reporters that the seized Israeli soldier would not be handed "as a present for any European or Arab side."

"We have spent nights for the sake of carrying out such operation, so would we hand him as a free present without any charge while our prisoners are held in Israel and the bodies of our martyrs are in Israeli morgues," he wondered.

About 8500 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, including a number of senior Hamas activists who have spent more than 20 years in prison.

Abu Muthana also denounced the Israeli raid at the Palestinian jail of Jericho where Ahmed Sa'dat, the Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was kidnapped by Israeli soldiers and transported to Israel.

As he welcomed the Egyptian mediation to free the Israeli soldier, Abu Muthana wondered "where the mediations were when Sa'dat was abducted, when the family of Ghalia was killed and when the Secretary-General of the PRC, Jamal Abu Samhadana, was assassinated."

The PRC, most of its members were Fatah fighters, has supported Hamas in the January parliamentary elections.

After taking office in March, the Hamas-led government has appointed Abu Samhadana of the PRC as the General Director of the Interior Ministry. A few weeks later, Israel assassinated Abu Samhadana since he was wanted for Israel since the year 2000.

He said that President Mahmoud Abbas, who was in Gaza at the moment, has been holding "intensive and multi-level contacts" with Arab leaders and the Middle East quartet comprising the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Erekat went on to say that Israel contacted the Palestinian National Authority via a third party, saying that "they (Israelis) contacted the U.S., which, in return, contacted us and also contacted Spain and the EU."

An Israeli soldier was abducted in an attack launched by eight Palestinian militants from three armed groups on an Israeli army post near Kerem Shalom crossing on the Gaza-Israel border on Sunday, in which two Israeli soldiers were killed and four others wounded.

Hamas' armed wing Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the leftist Popular Resistance Committees and the little-known Islamic Army jointly claimed responsibility for the fierce attack.

The Israeli army said that the missing soldier was still alive, vowing to spare no effort to secure his safe return. In the wake of the deadly attack, Israeli troops invaded the Gaza Strip in the largest intrusion since Israel pulled out forces and settlers from the Gaza Strip last summer after a 38-year-long presence there.

Erekat also urged the abductors to keep the soldier alive to avoid an imminent Israeli military operation on the Gaza Strip.

Olmert's inner cabinet have given the Palestinians until Tuesday to return Corporal Gilad Shalit, 19, a conscript tank gunner.

Palestinian security officials said there were negotiations with a group of gunmen that claimed responsibility for the border raid, although they have not confirmed holding Shalit.

"We are continuing our efforts to release the kidnapped soldier," one mediator said on condition of anonymity. "As of now, we have been told that the soldier is fine."

Olmert held both Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas responsible for the raid, dashing any chance Israel could revive peacemaking with the moderate leader and circumventing the hardline Palestinian government with which he shares power.

The idea wasn't even his, the 17-year-old confesses. He first heard it from a kid who sat beside him in class: If you get yourself arrested by the Israeli army, they send you to a prison with digital television, interesting books and even a decent soccer pitch. In short, everything you don't find in Nablus, a city cut off from the rest of the West Bank by a series of Israeli military checkpoints.

To Mohammed, it sounded like a dream vacation. So on Feb. 25, he tucked a kitchen knife under his shirt and headed toward the concrete barriers and metal turnstiles that block the road south to Ramallah.

It played out just as his friend described. When he got to the front of the long, slow-moving line of Palestinians seeking to leave Nablus, an Israeli soldier told him to lift up his shirt. With a sniper's rifle pointed at his chest, Mohammed pulled out the knife.

"Two soldiers jumped on top of me and started beating me up, but I didn't care," Mohammed recalled. "Getting arrested was like a fashion trend. It was the thing to do."

It's the latest peculiarity in a region already full of contradictions: Palestinian youths, who speak openly of their hatred for Israel, willingly putting themselves into Israeli custody because life in jail is seen as being better than life at home. Call it teen angst gone awry in a conflict zone.

"It's a real phenomenon," said Jacob Dallal, a spokesman for the Israeli army. He said soldiers had seen dozens of cases like Mohammed's, coming from both Nablus and nearby Jenin. "It's sort of a backhanded compliment to the [Israeli army] and the prison service. It passes from word of mouth that the conditions are not so bad in Israeli jails."

The first few nights after his arrest -- he was held with five others in a tiny cell just outside the Hawara checkpoint where he had been arrested -- were a gruelling disappointment for Mohammed. But 12 days later, he got the break he was hoping for: a transfer to Ofer prison, an Israeli jail for Palestinian prisoners just outside Ramallah.

Conditions in Ofer, the site of large-scale prisoners' riots late last year, have come under attack from human-rights groups alleging the torture and mistreatment of detainees. But Mohammed, as his classmates had promised him, had a different experience.

Prison life was a welcome break from the numbing routine of days sitting in school, evenings helping his father at the family's tailoring business and nights broken by gunfire. It was also a respite from his cramped family home where six people live in two small rooms, and from his father's insistence that the Western-dressed teenager abide by a strict interpretation of Islam.

"Ofer was like paradise. You could go to the toilet whenever you wanted, and we had a good time playing football and table tennis in the big courtyard. I started reading good books in there," he said, his hair short and gelled, and a hint of future stubble ringing his thin face. With a shy glance at his father, he added, "And I could stay up as late as I wanted."

Mohammed was pleased to get a seven-month sentence. He was crestfallen when his father, Qasim, paid a $250 bond to get him released early. "I was disappointed. My classmate who was sitting next to me went to jail two days before me and he's still there," he said jealously, suffering his father's glare. "In prison, there's digital television. You can watch everything. Out here, there's nothing."

While the stern Mr. Kharaz isn't impressed with his son's antics, he understands the motivation. "When a person becomes a young man, he starts looking for entertainment, and there are no good sports centres around here. All the sports fields in Nablus are all made of asphalt."

Other youths who have gotten arrested at the Hawara checkpoint did so in hopes of helping their families out of increasingly dire financial situations. Until a cut in Western aid forced the Palestinian Authority into effective insolvency earlier this year, the government paid a monthly stipend of about $200 to Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Samira Tabbouq's son Mahmoud just celebrated his 18th birthday inside Ofer. Mahmoud has gotten himself jailed twice in the past two years in hopes of getting money for his family, and his mother glows with pride describing her son's crafty efforts to get the Israelis to arrest him.

Last year, Ms. Tabbouq said her son got arrested at Hawara checkpoint while carrying a smoke bomb he had made from sugar and coal. When the Israelis released him from jail 2½ weeks later, he began plotting to get sent back.

The teenaged Mahmoud became the sole breadwinner for the family of eight when his father, a construction worker, was injured in a workplace accident five years ago.

At first, Mahmoud struggled to find after-school work in this economically depressed town that has been largely isolated from the outside world since Israel built the checkpoints during the height of the recent Palestinian intifada.

"His father pressured him to bring home money, to be a man, to help us with our poverty," Ms. Tabbouq said. "He would come home with nothing and his father would beat him."

On Feb. 4 of this year, he headed toward Hawara with a knife under his shirt and, ever since, has been in jail awaiting trial. Even though the Palestinian Authority's cash crunch means he's not helping his family financially, his mother, who visits him regularly, says he's as happy as he's been for a long time, reading books and dreaming of getting married and moving to Syria.

"My son is in jail because he has a big brain and is very intelligent. He thought about it a long time and realized the only way out of his economic and mental crisis was in prison," Ms. Tabbouq said.

Ironically, another reason Mahmoud wanted to go back to jail was to concentrate on his studies. His 17-year-old sister, Yusra, said that her brother, who was good in school, had spoken longingly of prison ever since he was released the first time.

"He couldn't stand the guys from the refugee camps who were always carrying weapons. He felt like he was suffocating. He told me, 'I can't achieve in school with this chaotic environment around me.' " Her brother is now applying to take his high-school exams from behind bars, Yusra added.

Mr. Kharaz, Mohammed's father, said that while he hoped his son wouldn't try to get jailed again, it was possible as long as life in Nablus continued to worsen.

"If the situation continues the way it is, everybody will be doing it," he said. "Young and old."

Sixty years ago, however, at the time of the British Mandate, it was Jews in Palestine who mainly waged terrorism against the Palestinians. As Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion recorded in his personal history of Israel: "From 1946 to 1947 there were scarcely any Arab attacks on the Yishuv [the Jewish community in Palestine]."

The same could not be said for the Zionists. Jewish terrorists waged an intense and bloody campaign against the Palestinians, British, and even some Jews who opposed them leading up to the establishment of Israel.

The two major Jewish terror organizations in pre-independence Palestine were the Irgun Zvai Leumi-National Military Organization, NMO, also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel-founded in 1937, and the Lohamei Herut Israel, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, Lehi in the Hebrew acronym, also known as the Stern Gang after its leader Avraham Stern, known as Yair, founded in 1940.

The Irgun was led by Menachem Begin, the future Israeli prime minister who was a leading proponent of Revisionist Zionism, the militant branch of Zionism pioneered by Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky, which openly despised the Arabs and sought restoration of what it called Eretz Yisrael, the ancient land of Israel. By this was meant "both sides of the Jordan," the Irgun slogan meaning all of Palestine and Jordan was the rightful home of the Jews.

Another belief of Begin's was that of the "fighting Jew," a romanticized idea expressed in Jabotinsky's old Betar movement song of "we shall create, with sweat and blood, a race of men, strong, brave and cruel." Israeli scholar Avishai Margalit translated the verse as "proud, generous and cruel," adding: "Many are still waiting for the generous part to emerge."

The Irgun was the dominant Jewish terrorist organization, both in size and the number and frequency of its attacks. Its most spectacular feat up to this time had been the July 22, 1946 blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, with the killing of 91 people-41 Arabs, 28 British and 17 Jews. Mainstream Zionists despised Begin and his Revisionists, although there was cooperation between the two on military matters. Ben-Gurion, the leader of mainstream Zionism, fought throughout his premiership with Begin.

The other major Jewish terrorist group, Lehi, was more extremist than the Irgun, claiming all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates as belonging to the Jews. When Jabotinsky declared a cease-fire in the fight against Britain and its mandate troops in Palestine during World War II, Stern broke with him and founded Lehi. Stern sought alliance with the Nazis, both because they shared an enemy in Britain and because Lehi shared Hitler's totalitarian ideology. During the war Sternists openly celebrated Nazi victories on the battlefield.

An infamous document called the "Ankara Document" because it was found in the German Embassy in Ankara after the war, detailed Avraham Stern's ideas "concerning the solution of the Jewish question in Europe." It was dated Jan. 11, 1941. At the time, Stern was still a member of the Irgun, which he called by its initials, NMO. Wrote Stern: "The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish People, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries....The NMO...is well acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities toward Zionist activity inside Germany and toward Zionist emigration plans....The NMO is closely related to the totalitarian movements in Europe in its ideology and structure."

In the Partition period, Irgun had around 2,000 men, while Lehi had about 800. Though the memberships were comparatively small, the damage these two groups caused in inflaming animosity between Arab and Jew was considerable. When Stern was killed by British police in 1942, leadership of Lehi was shared; among the leaders were Nathan Yalin-Mor, one of the eventual killers of Count Bernadotte, and Yitzhak Shamir, another future prime minister of Israel.

Arab terrorists carried out some major operations as well, including the bombing of the Jewish Agency and the Palestine Post. But in contrast to Jewish violence, it was unorganized and episodic. As historian Michael C. Hudson noted: "Organized Jewish violence against the British and Arabs (exemplified by the Irgun's bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946), however, was far more systematic and successful than that of the Palestinians, and the latter were unable to play a significant role in the final years of the Mandate."

The Jewish Agency, as the official representative of the Jewish community, repeatedly denied any responsibility for the acts of the Irgun and Lehi, maintaining they were underground terrorist groups operating outside the law. However, there was close cooperation among Irgun, Lehi and the Haganah underground army under an agreement called the Hebrew Resistance Movement and aimed specifically against the British Mandatory government. It went into force in the fall of 1945, when "Irgun and Lehi accepted Haganah discipline in the conduct of all armed operations," in the words of historian Noah Lucas.

By December 1947, British High Commissioner Alan Cunningham reported to London: "...the Haganah and the dissident groups are now working so closely together that the Agency's claim that they cannot control the dissidents is inadmissible."

Donald Neff is the author of the Warriors trilogy, Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel, and Fifty Years of Israel, all available from the AET Book Club.

1947: A Year of Terror

Jan. 12-Four killed by Irgun terrorist bombing of British headquarters.
Jan. 13-Arab kidnapped and castrated by Jewish terrorists.
March 1-Sixteen Britons killed by Jewish terrorists/Britain invokes martial law
March 10-Jewish informer killed by Jewish terrorists.
March 11-Two British soldiers killed by Jewish terrorists.
April 8-British constable killed by Jewish terrorists.
April 8-Jewish boy killed by British troops.
April 8-Jew beaten to death by Arabs.
April 22-Eight killed in Jewish terrorist bombing of the Cairo-Haifa train.
April 25-Five killed in Jewish terrorist bombing of British camp.
April 26-British police official killed by Jewish terrorist.
May 8-Three Jewish shops in Tel Aviv whose owners refused to contribute to Jewish terrorist groups burned down by Jewish terrorists.
May 8-Jew killed near Tel Aviv by Arab terrorists.
May 12-Two British policemen killed in Jewish Jerusalem.
May 15-British policeman killed in terrorist ambush.
May 15-Two British soldiers killed in terrorist Stern Gang attack.
May 16-Two British police officers killed by terrorists.
May 18-One Jew killed, one wounded by Arab terrorists.
June 5-Jewish terrorists introduce letter bombs in Middle East.
June 28-Four British soldiers killed in Jewish terrorist raids.
July 3-"Anti-terrorist" Jewish families beaten up by Irgunists.
July 18-British soldier killed by Jewish terrorists.
July 19-Another British soldier killed by Jewish terrorists.
July 20-Yet another British soldier killed by Jewish terrorists.
July 23-65 Jews killed when Haganah sinks immigration ship.
July 26-Two British soldiers killed in booby trap.
July 29-Three Jews executed by hanging. Jewish terrorists retaliate by hanging two British soldiers.
Aug. 5-Three British police killed by bomb; plot discovered to poison the water supply of non-Jewish parts of Jerusalem with botulism and other bacteria.
Aug. 10-Four Jews killed in Arab terror attack on Tel Aviv café.
Aug. 12-Five Jews, four Arabs killed, others injured, in spread of violent incidents over three days.
Aug. 15-Twelve Palestinians killed in raid by Haganah troops.
Aug. 18-Shops of five Jews in Tel Aviv destroyed by Jewish terrorists.
Aug. 23-Five Arabs of one family-two men, a woman and two children-killed by Jewish terrorists.
Sept. 7-French foil Stern Gang plot to air bomb London.
Sept. 21-British messenger killed by Jewish terrorists.
Sept. 26-Four British policemen killed in Irgun terrorist bank robbery.
Sept. 27-Illegal Jewish immigrant killed by British.
Sept. 29-13 killed, 53 wounded in Irgun terrorist attack on British police station.
Oct. 4-Two Jews killed in ambush, two Arabs killed in retaliation.
Oct. 13-Two British troops killed by Jewish terrorists in Jerusalem.
Oct. 26-Jewish settlement policeman found killed near Gaza.
Nov. 3-Jewish policeman killed, reportedly by Stern Gang after refusing to reveal secret police matters.
Nov. 12-21 killed in British-Jewish clashes.
Nov. 14-Jewish terrorists kill 4 Britons in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv
Nov. 30-Violent riots erupt throughout Arab world following adoption of U.N. partition plan. In Palestine, seven Jews killed and eight wounded in the first day. All told, during the first week at least 159 persons were killed in the Middle East, 66 of them in Palestine.
Dec. 2-Palestinians begin 3-day protest strike; 20 Jews, 15 Arabs killed. Five Arabs and seven Jews were killed the next day during a six-hour battle on the Tel Aviv-Jaffa border.
Dec. 13-35 Palestinian civilians killed in Jewish terrorist attacks.
Dec. 14-14 Jews killed by Arab Legion in retaliation.
Dec. 18-Palmach ("assault companies") kills 10 Arabs, including 5 children, in nighttime raid on northern Galilee village of Khissas. The following day Haganah troops blew up the home of the village elder of Qazaza in central Palestine, killing several inhabitants. Wrote The Times of London: "While the Jews are suffering mainly through sniping at their road convoys, the Arabs have lost many lives through Jewish assaults on their villages."
Dec. 20-Haganah raid on village of Qazaza kills one Palestinian.
Dec. 24-Stern Gang member killed for betrayal of another member.
Dec. 25-16 Arabs, Jews and British killed on Christmas.
Dec. 25-Palestinian landowner killed for selling land to Jews.
Dec. 26-Ben-Gurion proposes major offensive to reduce Arab population.
Dec. 26-Jewish terrorists get $107,000 in heists of diamond plants.
Dec. 29-14 Arabs killed by Irgun bomb in Jerusalem.
Dec. 29-Irgun flogs British major and three sergeants.
Dec. 30-41 Jews, 6 Arabs killed in riot sparked by Stern Gang.
Dec. 31-Irgun claims to have killed 374 Arabs and British during year.-D.N.