After a string of suicide bombings in Israel, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, ordered his Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to surround the Mukataa Compound in Ramallah.

The compound was the headquarters for Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. It had already been decimated by the Israelis during earlier military actions, but Sharon wanted Arafat isolated in the three remaining buildings.

CNN’s Michael Holmes was covering the story on March 31, 2002. Despite the tense standoff between IDF units on the outside and armed Palestinian fighters on the inside, Holmes was able to enter the structure where Arafat was trapped. Here is how he described it on CNN:

“It was an amazing sight. We were outside the compound at the time at the wall and all of a sudden forty people in white t-shirts and holding white flags walked down the road. They turned in front of an armored vehicle that was blocking the entrance to the compound itself and caught those two soldiers in their vehicle completely off guard.

They didn’t miss a step. They kept walking across a no-man’s-land, if you like, a car parked area that leads to Yasser Arafat’s offices. As we walked across, one Israeli soldier fired several shots into the ground near him, not close to the protesters. Tanks swung around . . . Everybody there on the Israeli side seemed completely caught off-guard.

As our group moved toward the office, another couple of journalists tried to catch up. Israeli soldiers fired across in front of them, about ten feet in front of them on the ground and they quickly retreated. We essentially walked through what was a barricaded front door. Yasser Arafat’s security soldiers opening up the barricade to let everyone in.”

Once in the office, Holmes was able to interview Arafat and bring a compelling story to the rest of the world. He was also able to obtain one of the Preventive Security flags that was at the compound as a memento. He, very kindly, let me have it for this collection.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict

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Arafat Signed Keffiyeh

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Palestine Preventive Security Flag