The Al Aksa intifadah reached a new level when on October 12, two Israeli reserve soldiers made a wrong turn and were captured and lynched in Ramallah.Ê Barak soon lost his Parliamentary majority and was forced to call new elections. Ariel Sharon defeated Barak in the elections of February 2001 Over the course of the next year, the violence escalated rapidly with repeated Palestinian suicide bombers detonating themselves inside Israel and killing scores of civilians. The violence reached a sickening new level when, on the first night of Passover 2002, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 29 Israelis participating in a Seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya. Israel responded by launching Operation Defensive Shield that saw the reoccupation of all the major West Bank towns. In the course of the reoccupation, a major battle took place in which Israel captured the refugee camp in Jenin. Fifteen Israelis and 55 Palestinians were killed.Ê The Palestinians claimed that a major massacre had occurred.Ê This turned out to be a bald-faced lie, but it was one that the world community happily bought into and promptly condemned Israel.Ê Only later did independent inquiries determine that, in fact, no massacre had taken place and that all the Palestinians who died had been engaged in the fighting. Though the reoccupation of West Bank substantially decreased the number of suicide attacks in Israel, it could not stop them completely. In the summer of 2003, a tenuous cease-fire was brokered by the United States but it was soon shattered by renewed Palestinian suicide bombings, including a gruesome bus bombing in August that killed dozens, including 6 small children and several Americans.

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