One year has passed since Ariel Sharon - at the time still the opposition leader - made his provocative visit to al-Haram ash-Sharif and al-Aqsa mosque on 28 September 2000. The move sparked off violent demonstrations in Jerusalem the following day, which rapidly spread to both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But no one could have predicted then that the region had just witnessed the eruption of a new intifada. Today, the Planning Directorate of the Israeli army estimates that the al-Aqsa Intifada could last until 2006 .

Looking back, one can already distinguish an evolution in the character of the intifada. It started as Palestinian demonstrations at well-defined points of frictions - usually the borders between Palestinian- and Israeli-controlled areas - faced by Israeli troops using military tactics and weapons rather than civilian law enforcement principles and methods of crowd control. As Israel increasingly mobilized military resources in its attempt to crush the uprising (the assassination policy and incursions into Area A are particularly relevant in this regard), Palestinian tactics also shifted to guerrilla-type actions and attacks inside the Green Line, thereby altering the nature of the confrontation.

Two kinds of military logic combine to perpetuate the cycle of violence. First comes the logic of tit-for-tat, by which every Israeli attack is a "response" to some earlier Palestinian attack, which in itself came to "avenge" martyrs fallen in another Israeli "response." And then there is the logic of escalation, a word that has been used so abundantly since the first day of the intifada that it has nearly lost its meaning. Escalation entails that all "responses" have to be more dramatic or deadly than the attacks that triggered them, supposedly to put an end to the violence, but in fact just pushing back the threshold of the acceptable. A brief look at some of the milestones may help to illustrate this point:

• Retaliatory shelling

On 12 October 2000, following the lynch in Ramallah of two Israeli reserve soldiers, Israeli helicopters shelled selected targets in Ramallah, Hebron, Jericho, Nablus and the Gaza Strip with anti-tank missiles for the first time. Live coverage of the shelling on several news channels provided vivid images of the extent of the Israeli response to the double murder, and many observers were shocked by the abrupt escalation of the conflict. Today, such retaliatory shelling has become part of the routine of the intifada.

• Tank fire

On 21 October 2000, tanks were used for the first time as a warning to the residents of Beit Jala, from where shots had been fired at the Israeli settlement of Gilo. The use by the Israeli army of such heavy weaponry against the Palestinian population, even if there were gunmen armed with light weapons among them, signaled a new escalation in the conflict. This first tank shot was fired in an open area, causing no injuries or material damage. Today, the use of tanks against civilian buildings, even in the highly populated refugee camps of the Gaza Strip, does not even cause any raised eyebrows. And today Beit Jala has been deserted by most of its inhabitants.

• Assassinations

On 9 November 2000, Fatah commander Hussein Abayat was killed in Beit Sahour when an Israeli military helicopter fired missiles on his jeep in broad daylight. The Israeli military establishment congratulated its troops for a well-executed operation - which also killed two women standing by the side of the road - and rejected widespread criticism of this extra-judicial killing. Today, almost 50 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's policy of assassinations, including at least 16 bystanders or so-called "collateral damage," and Israel goes on ignoring the international condemnation of the policy.

[On 7 March 2001, Ariel Sharon succeeded Ehud Barak as Israeli Prime Minister.]

• Incursions into Area A

On 1 April 2001, an Israeli squad entered Area A - under full Palestinian control - to arrest six Palestinians suspected of participation in "terrorist attacks" near Ramallah. The Palestinian Authority issued a warning that Israel had "crossed a red line" by conducting a raid inside Area A. Yet on 11 April 2001, Israeli tanks and bulldozers conducted a far deeper and larger incursion into Area A, in the Gaza camp of Khan Younis, leaving two Palestinians dead and destroying as many as 25 homes, according to inhabitants. On 16 April 2001, Israeli troops entered Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, which they occupied a full 24 hours, withdrawing only after a massive international outcry and heavy US pressure. The Israeli Defense Minister vowed that future actions into Area A would be "smart and quiet." Such incursions now occur regularly, throughout Gaza as well as in Jenin, Hebron, Beit Jala, Ramallah and Jericho. In the longest incursion so far, the Israeli army entered Beit Jala on 28 August 2001 in the morning and stayed put for 48 hours before withdrawing on 30 August 2001 at dawn. The city of Jenin was surrounded by the Israeli army from 11 to 15 September 2001, and while the world's attention was focused on the terror attacks that had hit the United States, repeated raids were conducted inside the city over these 4 days.

• Use of fighter jets

On 19 May 2001, following a suicide bombing that cost the life of five Israelis in front of a shopping mall in Netanya, Israel responded by using F-16 fighter jets to fire missiles at Palestinian security headquarters in Nablus. The attack left at least 9 Palestinians dead. The use of such powerful American-made weaponry was widely criticized both in Israel and abroad. Israel nevertheless sent its F-16 back to operation, both in mock attacks terrorizing the population and in actual strikes. On 10 August 2001 for example, F-16 jets bombarded the headquarters of the Palestinian civilian police in Ramallah following a deadly suicide attack in Jerusalem. On 26 August 2001, F-15 and F-16 jets attacked Palestinian positions in the West Bank and Gaza, especially the headquarters of the Palestinian police in Gaza City.

• Holding the Palestinian Authority responsible

On 10 August 2001, in response to a suicide bombing carried out in Jerusalem by a member of Hamas, Israeli troops seized nine buildings of the Palestinian Authority in East Jerusalem and its outskirts, most notably the Palestinian governor's compound in Abu Dis and the Orient House. This move was only the culmination of a strategy adopted already on 12 October 2000, when Israeli helicopters shelled infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for the popular lynch of two reserve soldiers that day in Ramallah. The Israeli thesis is that the Palestinian Authority is responsible for orchestrating the intifada, or at least for failing to prevent attacks against Israeli targets even when such attacks cannot be directly linked to it. Whereas at first the Tanzim (Fatah youth organization) was the favored target of such strikes, retaliatory actions were soon also directed at Force 17, the National Security Service, the Civil Police, the Naval Police or the General Intelligence. Nobody in Israel of course contests the wisdom of blaming the Palestinian Authority for the entire intifada. Such measures incidentally weaken the Palestinian Authority both materially and politically, thereby decreasing further its ability to prevent attacks by Hamas movement or the Islamic Jihad.

It is not easy to draw the portrait of this first year of the al-Aqsa Intifada in statistics. The PHRMG has chosen to focus on the Palestinian fatalities, dividing the report into specific categories: children, assassinations, journalists, victims of settler violence, and people who died at checkpoints. The report also comprises a section on Palestinian collaborators, on access to food and shelter, an overview of the Israeli fatalities in this intifada and some comments on media bias. Each section contains a complete and detailed list of victims when relevant, and is introduced by a short fact sheet presenting both the historical and the legal context.