A Camera’s View of the Mideast Conflict

The death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat last month could profoundly alter the Palestinians’ long-running conflict with Israel, which erupted into violence again four years ago. Despite a sense that diplomatic progress may finally be possible, the two sides face fundamental obstacles to peace: their competing claims to the same stony tracts of land, the violence that has torn apart lives and families on both sides of the divide, the painful historical injustices the two peoples have suffered.

Times staff photographer Rick Loomis documented these enduring themes of the conflict while on assignment in the second half of last year. His five-part photo essay begins today with a look at suicide attacks by Palestinian militants in Israeli cities and towns, the sometimes harsh measures Israel’s security forces have taken to prevent them, and the suffering of civilians on both sides.

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A scourge upon innocents or a brutal equalizer in an unequal war? Throughout the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the two sides have viewed the carnage-filled landscapes wrought by suicide bombings in very different ways. The attacks carried out by radical Palestinian groups were for a time a defining characteristic of the Palestinian uprising. More than 115 such bombings have occurred since the conflict erupted again in September 2000. But the bombings fell off sharply this year, largely because of Israel’s continuing construction of a barrier in the West Bank and its army operations against Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli security officials say one measure of the groups’ growing inability to mount attacks in Israeli cities and towns is the militants’ reliance on ever younger bombers. The perpetrator in a November attack on Tel Aviv’s landmark outdoor Carmel Market, which killed three Israelis, was a 16-year-old boy. Children as young as 14 have been caught trying to carry out suicide bombings.