Sitting In A Cafe On Manger Square in the heart of the deserted city of Bethlehem, the slim, unshaven guerrilla sipped a Turkish coffee and nervously fingered his revolver. The commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in the region just south of Jerusalem, Ibrahim Ebayat, 29, boasted that he had carried out a dozen "operations" against Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied territories in recent months. He told NEWSWEEK that gunmen under his command staked out a Jewish settlement for a week, then killed a female settler and wounded her husband last Tuesday as they drove down a road near Bethlehem. "We could kill 10 times as many Israelis if it were just for the sake of killing," he said, as his heavily armed bodyguards kept watch outside the restaurant. "But we're trying to send a message: 'You are not safe. Get out'." Ebayat, who said he has survived three Israeli assassination attempts―including a booby-trapped M-16 rifle that exploded and blew off the hand of a comrade―doesn't expect to survive the intifada, the 18-month-old Palestinian uprising. "Plenty of others can take my place," he said. "None of us have anything to lose."
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