Quote:
Do most Palestinians support suicide bombings?
Since a second intifada (uprising) broke out in the fall of 2000, polls show that up to 70 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza back suicide bombings. The bombings—and Hamas—were much less popular in the mid-1990s, when the peace process was moving along more quickly. Many Palestinians consider Hamas’ attacks a legitimate way of resisting Israeli occupation and argue that the world pays less attention to Palestinian losses—including about 1,600 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the second intifada began—than to Israeli ones. Pollsters say Palestinian support for anti-Israel violence hardened further during the spring 2002 Middle East crisis.
Has Arafat taken action to stop suicide terrorists?
The sides differ bitterly. Palestinian officials say that Arafat is doing all he can to crack down and warn that Israel’s spring 2002 incursion into the West Bank devastated the security apparatus Arafat could use to fight terrorism. But Israeli officials say that Arafat has played a double game—arresting militants after bombings but then quickly releasing them; denouncing suicide terrorists in English while praising them as “martyrs” in Arabic; funding secular suicide-bombing groups such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades; and using terror as a political tool. In June 2002, the Bush administration concluded that Arafat’s ongoing links to terrorism made him unsalvageable and called for his removal. Middle East experts say Arafat, who dislikes major rifts among Palestinians, was unwilling to risk a showdown with the increasingly popular suicide bombers, especially under pressure from Israel’s right-leaning prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who is reviled by Palestinians.
Seems as if the PLO wants it's cake and to eat it too. If the PA/PLO want to be viewed as the legitimate face of Palestine then 