The tanks rumbled into Ramallah as dawn broke and thunder rolled on Good Friday. Yasser Arafat knew they were coming after him. Barricaded in a windowless two-room office, he could only sit and rant as much of the Israeli force entering Ramallah—100 armored personnel carriers, 60 tanks and 2,500 soldiers—encircled his compound, their gun barrels swinging into position for a vengeful assault. Arafat worked the phones, dialing diplomats around the world, beseeching them for help. Sources inside Arafat's office told TIME that Arafat warned of a bloody battle between his forces and the Israeli army, hoping that prospect would prompt the international community to force the Israelis to desist. He phoned the Jerusalem hotel room of Anthony Zinni, the U.S. special envoy to the region, and pleaded with him to tell his bosses in the Bush Administration to stop what was about to happen. "It's an attack on me personally," he said. "They want to get rid of me."

He was right. Israeli government sources told TIME that hours before the assault on Arafat's compound—retaliation for the Passover slaughter by a Hamas suicide bomber of 20 Israelis and a tourist in the seaside city of Netanya—Prime Minister Ariel Sharon informed members of his Cabinet that he wanted to send forces into Ramallah to arrest Arafat and expel him from the Palestinian territories. "We should send Arafat away, out of the country," Sharon said. "We should not let him stay." But the heads of Israel's intelligence and security agencies all argued that releasing Arafat from the four-month confinement in Ramallah that Israel has imposed on him and pushing him abroad would embolden him to collude openly with terrorist groups and organize strikes against Israel. Cabinet ministers told TIME that at 5:30 a.m. Friday, Sharon settled on a different strategy: Israel would officially identify Arafat as an enemy, "isolate" him in his Ramallah headquarters, destroy the surrounding buildings and arrest or kill Palestinian militants they believed had holed up inside—but would stop short of raiding Arafat's bunker. "The only commitment we've made," Police Minister Uzi Landau told TIME, "is not to kill him."

To hard-liners in the Sharon government, that qualifies as restraint. To much of the rest of the world, the Israeli offensive that followed, though born out of months of simmering rage at Palestinian terror and Arafat's inability or refusal to stop it, was a staggering display of aggression. It was also potentially the most dangerous escalation yet in a war that people on both sides plainly hate but find impossible to escape.

While the Israelis insisted they did not plan to kill Arafat, they successfully made him think they would. On Saturday, after tanks had leveled much of the compound, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at the remains of Arafat's redoubt. At 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Arafat called one of his Cabinet ministers, Nabil Shaath, in the Jordanian capital of Amman. His voice shaking with fear, Arafat ordered Shaath to call Arab and European leaders. "Tell them the Israelis are going to take over my office," he said. The Israelis said they sought the surrender of several high-ranking Palestinian militants thought to be hiding out in the compound.

The grim scenes of all-out war in the West Bank seemed to have a particularly depressing impact in Washington and Crawford, Texas. After months on the sidelines, the Bush Administration recently tiptoed into the peacemaking fray—to contain the combat between the Israelis and Palestinians but also to try to assuage Arab resistance to a U.S. military campaign against Iraq. Palestinian and Israeli sources told TIME that both Sharon and Arafat called Secretary of State Colin Powell as Israel mobilized its forces last Friday. When Bush woke up Friday morning in Crawford, he was informed of the Israeli assault during his daily national-security briefing. After that, he led an hour-long video teleconference on the crisis with his national-security team. He decided that the Administration would restrict its initial public statements to a Powell press conference that afternoon—and that the statements would contain no criticism of Israel. Powell called for Sharon to "consider the consequences" of his actions and limit civilian casualties, but his posture effectively gave the Israelis a green light. White House officials indicated that while the Administration has not abandoned efforts to mediate a truce between the Israelis and the Palestinians, it doesn't plan to restrain Israel or launch any new initiative to halt the violence. "Ultimately," one senior aide told TIME, "we're going to try to ride it out."

Late last week, as Arafat's fate hung in the balance, the U.S. did vote for a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding Israeli withdrawal from Ramallah—which, under an agreement signed by Israel, has been under Palestinian self-rule since 1995. But at a hastily convened press conference in Crawford Saturday, the President pointedly did not call for a pullout, instead saying Arafat and Arab leaders "could do a lot more" to stop Palestinian terror. "I firmly believe that we can achieve a peace in the region," he said.

Meanwhile, the region seemed about to come undone. "If Arafat is killed, all hell will break loose," a senior Arab diplomat told TIME. "You can say goodbye to the peace process for 10 years." Before storming into Arafat's compound, the Israelis blared over a loudspeaker to those inside, "Lay down your arms and come out." Israeli officials told TIME that the Egoz Battalion, a highly trained unit of commandos, led the room-to-room raid through Arafat's compound. Within 24 hours, the Israelis had arrested 150 Palestinians—including fugitives on their wanted list—wounded 40 Arafat bodyguards and killed five others. Only a handful of senior aides and bodyguards remained with Arafat: seven hours prior to the Israeli invasion, Arafat had sent most of his top aides home. (Arafat's wife Suha and daughter Zahwa have remained in Paris for most of the intifadeh.) With electricity cut, Arafat was forced to rely on a generator for power. He had little food, water or medical supplies. "He won't be able to go to the toilet without us knowing about it," an Israeli intelligence officer told TIME, with not much exaggeration.

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