I remember that (the ESB gunman) as well, but nothing about the palestinian angle. Hmm...
It's the difference between my life pre-FR and now. I didn't have a computer in 1997. I do remember being told the guy was Palestinian, and I remember witnesses saying that he had asked a number of people "Are you Egyptian?" as he was firing, but at least here in NY it was very quickly a story about a deranged soul acting alone, and "how could a disturbed indivdual buy a gun legally in another state, gotta have uniform gun control across the U.S. and then this won't happen anymore".
Today I'd be asking questions like "If he lost all his money, how was he supporting himself for two months in the U.S.? What was he doing all that time? Who did he see? What was the significance of his arival on Christmas Eve?" and so on.
In one of the articles I posted, the widow was appealing to Arafat to launch an invetigation into the "mysterious circumtances" of her husband's death (!). Very familiar "denial" routine. The whole thing makes me sick. I almost wish he'd turned himself into a bomb instead, at least we'd have been talking about the proper thing.