Why Netanya?

Blame it on the so-called right of return. Because Natanya absorbed an Arab village that was abandoned in 1948, Palestinians view it as an illegal settlement.

The implications: the PLO will justify any attack on any such settlement that it views as "illegal" under international law. The head of the PLO Refugee Department, Daoud Barakat, confirms this.

In January 1995, following Hamas terror bombs that killed 21 people at a bus stop at the Beit Lid/Netanya junction, the PLO secretary general Marwan Barghouti, now in prison for the first degree murders of 13 people, calmly told MBC Saudi television why the PLO would justify an attack on Netanya: "This is an area that we have yet to liberate." The video is readily available.

Meanwhile, the December 1995 PLO-Hamas accord, signed in Cairo by both Palestinian factions, allows Hamas to carry out operations in areas within Israel proper that have "not yet been liberated".