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/ BARAK / 96 an agreement with the Palestinians to replace an Israeli troop cordon there with Palestinian police. But on the morning of Saturday October 7th, hours after the Palestinian police took over, a mob attacked, burned and ransacked the site. They destroyed the Torah scrolls. A few hours later, our soldiers found the body of a rabbi from a nearby settlement. He had gone to survey the damage to the synagogue. That evening, I delivered an ultimatum: “If we don’t see a change in the patterns of violence in the next two days, we will regard this as a cessation by Arafat of the peace process.” That did, briefly, have an effect. When Clinton reinforced my message later in the day, Dennis told me that for the first time, he sensed that Arafat realized he had to act. But again, it was not enough, nor in anything like a sustained manner. And with an appalling act of murder three days afterwards, it was too late. That outrage came in Ramallah. Two Israeli reservists took a wrong turn and ended up driving into the town. They were taken to the Palestinian police station. Hundreds of people broke in and stabbed them, gouged their eyes out and disembowled them. In a chilling image broadcast around the world, one of the murderers brandished the bloodstained palms of his hands in a gesture of triumph. Since I was Defense Minister as well, I spent the hours that followed in the kirya. We ordered attack helicopters into action for the first time, though with advance warning to local Palestinians in the areas we targeted. We destroyed the Ramallah police station, as well as a militia base near Arafat’s headquarters in Gaza. But Arafat emerged to tell a cheering crowd: “Our people don’t care. They don’t hesitate to continue their march to Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian independent state.” Israelis did care. It is hard to say which emotion was more powerful: disgust or fury. But if the opinion polls were to be believed, a large majority wanted us to hit back with the full force of the Israeli army. Still, my overriding aim remained to end the violence if possible, not make it worse. When Clinton asked me to join him, Arafat, King Abdullah of Jordan and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for a summit in Sharm al-Sheikh, I agreed. We worked out a series of steps to disengage. Arafat was finally supposed to order the Palestinian Authority security forces and Tanzim to cease fire, and establish no-go perimeters around our army positions. We would reopen Gaza airport and, over a period of two weeks, pull back our forces to where they had been before the violence began. But again, it didn’t happen. The Palestinian attacks intensified and, as ’d made clear at the 382 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028230