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Survivors Mark Ten Years since Passover Blast
(Times of Israel) Matti Friedman - Precisely ten years ago, during the Second Intifada, Abdel-Basset Odeh, 25, was dispatched by Hamas terrorists to the Park Hotel in Netanya, where he entered the packed dining hall during the Seder meal. The Palestinian then detonated the powerful bomb he carried among the diners, killing 30 and wounding 140 others. On Tuesday, survivors of the bombing and relatives of the dead gathered in the hotel's dining hall for a memorial service. From the beginning of the wave of Palestinian attacks in the fall of 2000 and until that night 18 months later, Israel's military had tried to battle terror groups in the West Bank with small-scale operations and arrests, refraining from invading major cities ceded to Palestinian Authority control as part of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s. That changed in the immediate aftermath of the bombing at the Park Hotel, which seemed to bring Israelis a grim clarity of purpose that had not existed before. The next day, prime minister Ariel Sharon's government mobilized infantry and tank reserves and launched an invasion of West Bank cities. The Park Hotel bombing brought the war into the Palestinians' own streets and neighborhoods. Despite some skepticism about the army's ability to successfully squash Palestinian terrorism, a year after the Park Hotel bombing the attacks had slowed. A year after that, they had all but ceased.