Can anyone imagine that a suiciding orthodox Jew would not blow himself up on a bus filled with other orthodox Jews to achieve a strategic end? Coming just hours after the bombing death of Sergio Vieira de Mello in Baghdad, this timely Jerusalem bus bombing attempts to drive that news off the radar screen---and in addition, put an end to pressure on Israel to move forward on the then-current peace plan. Asking the Palestinian Authority to accept responsibility for Hamas is like asking the FBI to assume responsibility for the American mafia.August 19, 2003, [7:29 p.m. Tel Aviv time.] Thomas Crosbie Media, US envoy dies after bomb blast,
August 19, 2003, [9:29 p.m. Tel Aviv time.] Thomas Crosbie Media, Bus bomb kills three in Israel,
August 19, 2003, [10:10 p.m. Tel Aviv time.] Thomas Crosbie Media, Children among dead in Jerusalem blast,
August 19, 2003, [11:42 p.m. Tel Aviv time.] Thomas Crosbie Media, Suicide bomber kills 20 in Jerusalem,
August 19, 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Suicide bomber kills 20, injures dozens on Jerusalem bus, by Michael Nelson Matza and Sarhaddi Soraya Nelson,
August 19, 2003, Associated Press, Suicide bomber blows himself up on Jerusalem bus, at least 18 dead, by Lara Sukhitian, Associated Press Writer,
August 19, 2003, NPR All Things Considered, Analysis: Bus bombing in Jerusalem kills at least 18, injures more than 100, by Melissa Block and Robert Siegel,
August 19, 2003, AP Online, U.S. to Push Vs. Palestinian Militants, by Barry Schweid,
August 19, 2003, New York Times, Bombing Kills 18 and Hurts Scores More on Jerusalem Bus, by James Bennet,
August 20, 2003, New York Times, Bombing Kills 18 and Hurts Scores on Jerusalem Bus, by James Bennet,
August 20, 2003. Philadelphia Inquirer, Shattering Attacks in Jerusalem; Bomb kills 19 in blow to peace; Bus bomb kills 19 in Jerusalem, By Michael Matza and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Inquirer Staff Writers,
August 20, 2003, Chicago Tribune, Blasts rock Iraq, Israel, Bus bomb in Jerusalem kills 18, threatens peace process, Ultra-Orthodox Jews targeted, by Joel Greenberg, Special to the Tribune,
August 20, 2003, The Boston Globe, Bomber Hits Bus Carrying Israeli Families 18 Die; 100 Wounded; Children Among Victims, by Charles A. Radin and Dan Ephron, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent,
August 20, 2003, Jerusalem Post, At least 18 killed in Jerusalem bus bombing. Many children among victims; both Jihad, Hamas claim responsiblilty, by Etgar Lefkovits, Erik Schechter,
August 20, 2003, The Washington Post, 18 Killed, More Than 100 Injured, by Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson,
August 23, 2003, The Economist (US), After the Jerusalem bomb; Israel and the Palestinians,
August 19, 2003, [7:29 p.m. Tel Aviv time.] Thomas Crosbie Media, US envoy dies after bomb blast,
19/08/2003 - 18:29:29
The United Nations' special envoy to Iraq, Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, has died after today's horrific bomb blast.
The blast was centred close to Mr de Mello's office.
He had been trapped in the wreckage from the blast since it took place.
August 19, 2003, [9:29 p.m. Tel Aviv time.] Thomas Crosbie Media, Bus bomb kills three in Israel,
19/08/2003 - 19:29:43
A suicide bomb has exploded in Jerusalem tonight, rescue services in Israel said tonight.
The explosion is reported to have wrecked a bus in the city, with three people reported dead.
Police in Israel say there are multiple injuries.
August 19, 2003, [10:10 p.m. Tel Aviv time.] Thomas Crosbie Media, Children among dead in Jerusalem blast, Tuesday, August 19, 2003 : 8:10:19 PM
A suicide bomber blew himself up on a packed Jerusalem bus tonight, killing at least five people, among them children, and wounding more than 40, police said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. However, the militant Islamic Jihad has said it would avenge the killing of a senior operative by Israeli troops last week.
The bombing threatened to derail a US-backed peace plan, the “road map” to Palestinian statehood.
At the weekend, Israel and the Palestinians had reached agreement on the handover of four West Bank towns to Palestinian control, but the deal is likely to be put on hold.
The blast went off shortly after 9pm (1800GMT) on a main thoroughfare in Jerusalem. The bus was packed with passengers.
Shocked survivors, including several crying children with blood-smeared faces, were led away from the scene. A paramedic cradled a little girl in his arms, and two others led away an older woman.
Paramedics treated wounded on the pavement, and body parts were strewn around.
The bus was badly damaged, with windows blown out.
There was no immediate comment by the Palestinian Authority. The explosion went off as Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was meeting Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip to persuade them to halt attacks on Israelis.
The militants had declared a unilateral three-month truce on June 29, but have said they would continue taking revenge for Israeli killings of their operatives.
August 19, 2003, [11:42 p.m. Tel Aviv time.] Thomas Crosbie Media, Suicide bomber kills 20 in Jerusalem, Tuesday, August 19, 2003 : 9:42:11 PM
A suicide bomber blew up a bus packed with Jews returning from the Western Wall tonight, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 100 in one of the deadliest bombings in the past three years of fighting.
The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility, in a call to the Lebanese TV station Al Manar.
The bombing threatened to derail the US-backed “road map” peace plan. In a first move, Israel froze talks initially set for tonight on the handover of four West Bank towns to Palestinian control.
Islamic Jihad has said it would avenge the killing of a senior operative by Israeli troops last week. Hamas said it was not involved.
The blast went off shortly after 9pm (7pm Irish time) as the crowded tandem bus drove along a main route through Jerusalem and another bus pulled in front of it, witnesses said.
"It was the No 2 bus that came from the Western Wall," said a motorist, Jacob Bitnovsky. "It was a double bus. I heard a huge blast and when I turned around I saw parts of the bus flying everywhere. I got out of the car and ran. There was a lot of smoke and running, saw a child on the ground gasping for air."
The bus had started out at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine, and was headed to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood, making it likely that many of the passengers were religious Jews.
Jerusalem Police chief Mickey Levy said the blast was apparently set off by a suicide bomber.
A second bus that was nearby when the explosion went off was also badly damaged, with windows blown out. Rescuers had to use blow torches to get out some of the wounded.
"What is clear is that it was a very big bomb," said Jerusalem fire chief Amnon Amir.
Shocked survivors, including several crying children with blood-smeared faces, were led away from the scene. A paramedic cradled a little girl in his arms, and two others led away an older woman.
Paramedics treated wounded on the roadside, and body parts were strewn across the pavement.
Levy said that more than 15 people were killed, and Israel Army Radio and rescue service workers put the number of dead at 20. Israeli officials do not include the bomber in the death toll.
Palestinian legislator Saeb Erekat condemned the bombing.
The explosion went off as Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was meeting with Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip to persuade them to halt attacks on Israelis.
Palestinian militants had declared a unilateral three-month truce on June 29, but have said they would continue taking revenge for Israeli killings of their operatives.
Hamas said it was not involved. "We are committed to the truce. I don't know who carried out this action," said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader.
August 19, 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, Suicide bomber kills 20, injures dozens on Jerusalem bus, by Michael Nelson Matza and Sarhaddi Soraya Nelson,
JERUSALEM---A Palestinian suicide bomber tore apart a bus Tuesday night in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, killing at least 20 people, injuring dozens more and destroying what was left of an already battered truce.
The attack, the worst since a cease-fire began nearly two months ago, jeopardized the U.S.-backed peace plan, known as the road map.
The bombing occurred at 9 p.m. on an articulated public bus packed with children still on summer holiday. It was so powerful that it blew out windows in another bus nearby. Many of the victims were on their way back from worshiping at the Western Wall in the Old City, one of Judaism's most sacred sites. Some of those killed and many of the wounded were children.
There were conflicting reports from the militant factions Islamic Jihad and Hamas claiming responsibility. Islamic Jihad had vowed to retaliate for the slaying of one of its leaders, Mohammed Ayub Sidr, during an Israel Defense Forces raid Thursday in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, condemned the attack. He was meeting with Islamic Jihad leaders in Gaza City at the time of bombing to discuss extending the cease-fire, or "hudna," beyond September. The cease-fire is widely considered crucial to the peace plan, a series of steps each side must take to end the violence and establish a Palestinian state by 2005.
Israel officials canceled plans to meet with Palestinian security officials to discuss the return of four West Bank cities to Palestinian control. A meeting Friday between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also was canceled.
"While we are reaching out, going the extra mile, we're getting suicide bombers," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled, who rushed to the scene of the attack. "This is a hudna? Targeting a bus of kids coming from the Western Wall?"
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
"There cannot be a peace process when there is a death process," Sharon adviser Dore Gold told Sky News late Tuesday night.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
The attack ended any foreseeable discussion on returning the West Bank cities of Qalqiliya, Jericho, Tulkarem and Ramallah to Palestinian control. Officials from both sides had said the hand-over was a significant move forward along the road map, but Palestinians in those cities dismissed it as window dressing.
Sharon and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz planned to meet Wednesday morning to discuss how else Israel would respond to the attack.
The United States called on the Palestinian Authority to take immediate action against the militants. "We condemn this act of terrorism in the strongest possible terms," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and the victims."
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Police still were trying to determine where the bomber got onto the bus and whether he had disguised himself as an ultra-Orthodox Jew to avoid detection. He detonated his explosives at the center of the bus.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
Members of the ultra-Orthodox volunteer rescue group Zaka, who are usually first on the scene, were hosting a reception attended by Mofaz and other Defense Ministry officials a few blocks from where the blast occurred, according to the group's director, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav. His white shirt sleeves bloodied up to his elbows, Meshi-Zahav said he found a 3-month-old baby alive beneath three lifeless adults piled on top of one another. There were many familiar faces among the dead, he said, all from the neighborhood in which he lives. "You think, `How will you face the families of the people you identify?' "
He said he would bury the shirt he was wearing. "This is from the blood of many Jews," he said.
Bodies were wrapped in white plastic bags and stacked at a nearby traffic circle
"I saw little children who had been hurled from the bus," said one of those injured, Avraham Zarbiv, 22, a student at a yeshiva, or religious school. Zarbiv was riding his bicycle alongside the bus when the explosion hit. The force sent him flying.
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
"I smelled burned flesh. There was silence. There were people sitting in their seats not moving," Zarbiv, his hair singed and his face blackened with soot, said from his hospital bed at Hadassah Hospital in nearby Mount Scopus.
"I saw babies on the ground near the bus," said another patient, Meirav Edri, 19, of Eilat. "I saw a woman without a head, without legs. It's indescribable. I fainted a few times."
A videotape released by Hamas in the West Bank city of Hebron showed a man who called himself Raed Abdel-Hamid Mesk describing how he would carry out the suicide bombing to avenge Israel's killing of one of the group's members.
Islamic Jihad said in a statement to Hezbollah's al Manar television in Lebanon that it carried out the attack, but Islamic Jihad officials meeting with Abbas in the Gaza Strip wouldn't confirm the report.
Israeli professor Shmuel Sandler, speaking hours before the explosion, said each side was taking steps toward peace that didn't cost too much.
"Israel released Palestinian prisoners, but not important ones. The Palestinians have so far stayed away from terror," but without dismantling militant groups, said Sandler, a professor at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv who specializes in Arab-Israeli relations.
"The problem is that both sides rushed into this hoping that the process would create the momentum, but the momentum has not been created yet," Sandler said. "Nobody is taking a strategic step; nobody is crossing the Rubicon."
Tuesday's bombing promised to widen the gap between the warring sides.
---(Matza reported from Jerusalem. Nelson reported from Ra'anana, Israel.),
August 19, 2003, Associated Press, Suicide bomber blows himself up on Jerusalem bus, at least 18 dead, by Lara Sukhitian, Associated Press Writer,
JERUSALEM A suicide bomber blew himself up on a double bus packed with Jewish worshippers returning from the Western Wall on Tuesday, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 100 in one of the deadliest Palestinian attacks in the past three years.
Five of the dead and about 40 of the wounded were children, hospital officials said.
The attack, claimed both by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, marked perhaps the most serious blow yet to the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, which was unveiled three months ago.
In an immediate response, Israel froze all contacts with the Palestinian Authority, as well as the handover of two West Bank towns, Jericho and Qalqiliya, to Palestinian control. The handover had been expected later this week. Israel also decided to seal off the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a security source said.
The powerful explosion ripped through the tandem bus shortly after 9 p.m. (1800 GMT). At the time, the bus was heading from the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine, to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Many families with children were on the bus, witnesses said.
"I had just come home from praying at the Western Wall and was heading home," said Zvi Weiss, an 18-year-old Jewish seminary student from New York City who sat in the front of the bus and escaped unharmed.
"The bomb went off at the back of the bus. Everything went black. I climbed out of the broken window and started running. All around me there were people covered in blood, screaming, some with limbs missing."
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was meeting with Islamic Jihad leaders in the Gaza Strip at the time of the explosion, in a renewed attempt to persuade them to halt attacks.
Abbas condemned the bombing as a "terrible act" and said he ordered Palestinian security forces to investigate. Abbas has been trying to use persuasion, rather than force in handling the militants. It might cost him his job if his approach fails and violence continues.
The road map plan requires the Palestinian security forces to dismantle militant groups, something Abbas has said he cannot do for fear of setting off internal fighting. The militants declared a unilateral truce June 29, but have repeatedly broken their pledge since then.
In Tuesday's bombing, at least 18 were killed, including five children, the Zaka rescue service said. Police initially had put the death toll at 20, but there was some confusion because many of the bodies had been dismembered, rescue workers said.
About 40 of the wounded were children, hospital officials said.
The bus had started out at the Western Wall. One report said among the passengers were members of a family who had celebrated a Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish rite of passage into adulthood for boys, at the Western Wall.
A second bus passing nearby when the explosion went off was also badly damaged, with windows blown out. Rescuers had to use blow torches to get out some of the wounded.
Police said the bomb was very powerful, and had been packed with bits of metal for greater deadliness.
Shocked survivors, including crying children with blood-smeared faces, were led away from the scene. A paramedic cradled a little girl with a ponytail in his arms, and two others led away an older woman who had blood streaming down her face.
Paramedics treated wounded on the sidewalk, and body parts were strewn on the ground. Later Tuesday, hundreds of people were praying at the site, some holding prayer books. A small group chanted "Death to Arabs! "
In Washington, the White House deplored the bombing and offered condolences to the victims and their families.
"We condemn this vicious act of terrorism," said Sean McCormack, a spokesman on national security issues. "We call on the Palestinian Authority to dismantle terrorism."
The European Union's top foreign policy representative, Javier Solana, condemned the bombing and urged all sides to "to exert maximum influence on armed groups to stop all attacks."
The attack followed a deadly explosion set off by a suicide bomber outside the hotel housing the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.
An Israeli government spokesman said there was no known direct link between the two bombings, although he said the motivations were similar.
"It is motivated by extremist Islamist militants who don't accept the legitimacy of the West or of Israel," said the spokesman, Dore Gold.
Gold said Israel was paying the price for the Palestinian Authority' s inability to rein in militants.
Abbas said he has asked Palestinian security forces to investigate. "I want to declare my full condemnation for this terrible act, which cannot serve the interests of the Palestinian people," he said.
Last week, Islamic Jihad threatened attacks on Israelis to avenge the killing of a senior operative, Mohammed Sidr, in an Israeli arrest raid in the West Bank city of Hebron.
In a phone call to The Associated Press, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Tuesday's bombing, saying it was in revenge for the killing of Sidr, whom Israel had accused of plotting a series of attacks.
However, later Tuesday, Hamas distributed fliers in Hebron, saying the Jerusalem bombing was carried out by one of its supporters, identified as Raed Abdel-Hamed Mesk, 29, a mosque preacher from Hebron.
Mesk was a close friend of Sidr, Israel Army Radio reported.
Hamas released Mesk's farewell video. The plump man with the bushy beard said he was a member of the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, accused Israel of violating the cease-fire offered by Hamas.
Mesk's wife Arij began clearing belongings out of her home late Tuesday, in expectation that it would be demolished by Israeli troops. The Israeli military routinely destroys the homes of suicide bombers, hoping it will act as a deterrent.
Arij Mesk said she was not sad. "God gave Raed something he always dreamed of. All of his life he dreamed of being a martyr," she said. The couple has two children, ages two and three.
Following the bombing, police raised their state of alert to its second- highest level, Israel Radio reported.
After midnight Tuesday, Israeli troops in Hebron surrounded the house of a Hamas activist and used a bullhorn to order him out. There was no response, neighbors said.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, a Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, insisted the group was not involved. "We are committed to the truce. I don't know who carried out this action," he said.
August 19, 2003, NPR All Things Considered, Analysis: Bus bombing in Jerusalem kills at least 18, injures more than 100, by Melissa Block and Robert Siegel, [7 hour time difference between Tel Aviv and New York]
Host: MELISSA BLOCK, ROBERT SIEGEL
Time: 9:00-10:00 PM
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
In Jerusalem today at least 18 people are dead and more than a hundred wounded after a suicide bombing tore a bus apart on a busy downtown street. Several children were among those killed. Two rival Palestinian Islamist organizations, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, claimed responsibility for the attack. The political consequences were immediate. Israel froze talks on the handover of four West Bank cities to Palestinian control. NPR's Peter Kenyon is in Jerusalem.
PETER KENYON reporting:
The blast was heard in both West and East Jerusalem, and the first eyewitnesses described a gruesome scene. They said the number two bus was severely damaged and bodies and body parts were strewn across the street in a Jewish neighborhood not far from the Mea Shearim ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
Police described it as a large bomb relatively detonated on board a double-length bus. There was another bus behind that was also damaged. Blood-soaked young children were led into waiting ambulances. Police said an unspecified number of children were among the dead, and some very young children, toddlers, were among the seriously wounded. Baby strollers were found among the wreckage.
The number of wounded rapidly escalated through the evening. It's possible the death toll will rise higher. Some of these injuries are described as life-threatening.
SIEGEL: Peter, this number two bus, I gather, goes from the Old City and near the Western Wall actually to Mea Shearim.
KENYON: That's right. And it's a very popular route. This, of course, was well after the rush hour, but this bus was, in fact, packed. It's a route that comes from the Old City not far from the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, and it often carries a number of the Jewish faithful. All of which raises the question: How did a Palestinian bomber get on board this particular bus? There is one report from Israeli television quoting police, saying they're exploring the theory that the bomber may have been disguised as a religious Jew. Such disguises have been used in the past.
Among the immediate reactions, US Secretary of State Colin Powell called the Israeli foreign minister, and he called it a terrible day for supporters of peace in the Mideast.
SIEGEL: What do people there make of these two competing claims from both Islamic Jihad and Hamas?
KENYON: It's difficult to say anything definitive except that Hamas has released a videotape showing a young man purported to be the bomber, a young man from Hebron. That may prove to be the stronger claim. It's impossible to tell at this hour.
Both organizations said it was revenge for the killing of members of their respective organizations by the Israeli military. Israeli officials don't accept this revenge notion. They don't like to hear comparisons between Israeli military raids and pursuit of wanted Palestinians compared with deliberate Palestinian attacks on civilians. But they say even as a retaliatory strike this bombing was hugely disproportionate, and it's hard to imagine this not having some serious consequences.
SIEGEL: Now beyond the freeze on the talks, I assume people are assessing the damage right now to progress on the road map to peace. This is not a very bright moment for that peace process.
KENYON: Not at all. And one of the issues in those talks on handing over four West Bank cities was, in fact, the issue of checkpoints outside the cities. The Palestinians wanted them removed, and the Israelis, of course, say that they're essential to try and slow the movement at least of suicide bombers such as this. Of course, there's no confirmation on what route was actually taken by the bomber today.
Beyond that, there's strong cries in the Israeli Cabinet likely to come for a powerful response, although there will also be pressure to try and keep the road map for peace alive. Israel has grown increasingly frustrated with Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas' insistence that he can't confront the armed factions.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Peter.
NPR's Peter Kenyon on today's bus bombing in Jerusalem.
August 19, 2003, AP Online, U.S. to Push Vs. Palestinian Militants, by Barry Schweid,
WASHINGTON---The Bush administration intends to intensify its demand that Palestinian leaders dismantle West Bank and Gaza terror organizations after a devastating bomb attack on a packed bus in Jerusalem.
Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom as a White House spokesman condemned and deplored the attack Tuesday that virtually shattered an already shaky truce pledged by Palestinian extremist groups.
A senior U.S. official insisted President Bush's policy, grounded in a peacemaking roadmap, was not in crisis, but that additional emphasis would be put on a call for Palestinian leaders to dismantle the terror infrastructure.
"I don't think it puts it in jeopardy," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Islamic Jihad, which had agreed to a truce at the behest of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, took responsibility for the bus attack, saying it was avenging the killing of a senior operative by Israeli troops last week.
Hamas, which the State Department also condemns as a terrorist group and also had pledged a truce, later claimed responsibility for the attack as well.
Even before the terrorist struck, Bush had said a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians could only be achieved by dismantling terrorist organizations.
"Here's my view on cease-fires," said Bush, standing outside a gas station in Crawford, Texas, en route to play a round of golf. "I'm happy there's calm. I think that's important. But the most important thing is for the parties that care for peace to dismantle terrorist organizations that want to kill."
"That's how we're going to achieve a peaceful settlement in the Middle East. Calm is good. The fact that people aren't dying is good. But the ultimate solution _ and this can happen quickly in my judgment _ is to find those who would believe killing is the best approach to dealing with the very difficult problems in the Middle East," he said.
Only a few hours later, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus crammed with Orthodox Jews on their way home from prayer at the Temple Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.
Abbas condemned the bombing as a "terrible act."
The prime minister has resisted U.S. appeals that he dismantle terror groups, arguing it could touch off a civil war among Palestinians. He has employed rhetoric, instead.
Despite U.S. assurances the peace process remained on track, Israel called off a plan to give the Palestinians control of Jericho and Qalqiliya on the West Bank.
Bush did not issue a statement.
White House spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters assigned to the President's monthlong vacation stay in Texas that "we condemn this vicious act of terrorism. We call on the Palestinian Authority to dismantle terrorism."
McCormack said the president offers his "thoughts and prayers" to the wounded and to the families of those killed.
Image Caption: Israelis check the bodies of victims of an explosion in downtown Jerusalem, Tuesday Aug. 19 2003. A suicide bomber blew up a bus packed with observant Jews returning from the Western Wall, killing at least 20 and wounding more than 100, police said. (AP Photo/Nili Bassan)
August 19, 2003, New York Times, Bombing Kills 18 and Hurts Scores More on Jerusalem Bus, by James Bennet,
JERUSALEM, Aug. 19 - A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 18 people, including children, when he detonated an explosive packed with ball bearings tonight aboard a city bus crowded with families, some of them returning from Judaism's holiest site, the Western Wall.
The blast resounded across Jerusalem as it peeled up the roof of the bus and blew out its windows, smearing human remains on a preceding tour bus and opening a deep wound in the American-backed peace effort.
More than 100 people were reported hurt, many seriously, in one of the deadliest attacks in almost three years of conflict. Men carrying blood-spattered children raced toward approaching ambulances. On a street strewn with broken glass and bloodied sheet metal, a man knelt near the shattered bus to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a toddler.
Later, in a hospital here, Yaacov Bahar, 35, held his hands in the air in front of him, as though he were still carrying an infant, as he described helping bring four children from the bus.
"In my eyes, I'm still seeing the nightmare," said Mr. Bahar, who was being treated for shock.
Breaking off security talks tonight, Israel froze all contacts with the Palestinian leadership after the bombing.
A senior Israeli official said Israel would probably seal Palestinians into their cities and towns again on Wednesday, re-imposing tight travel restrictions that had been loosened somewhat as the peace effort took hold in recent weeks.
The attack tonight was claimed by members of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Israeli police said the bomber was from Hamas.
Palestinian and Israeli officers had been discussing how Palestinian forces would assume responsibility from Israel for policing two West Bank cities, continuing an exchange of control called for by the peace plan, known as the road map.
But Israeli officials reacted to the bombing with fury tonight, and expressed frustration toward a peace plan they said was endangering their security.
"Israel cannot be the perpetual testing ground for peace proposals that the Palestinians fail to implement," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In Gaza City, the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters, "I declare my strong condemnation of this horrible act that doesn't serve the interests of the Palestinian people." Mr. Abbas said he offered "my real sorrow" to the families of the victims. sv29,1if,,v29 Israeli officials noted that Israel had recently softened its own demands on the Palestinian leadership, insisting only that it supervise the people Israel considers terrorists and prevent them from committing new attacks, rather than putting them in jail. The bombing tonight appeared certain to renew Israeli and American pressure on Mr. Abbas, to take more forceful action against militant groups.
Mr. Abbas said he had ordered his minister of security, Muhammad Dahlan, "to immediately investigate this attack and to take the necessary measures regarding its perpetrators."
Mr. Abbas and Mr. Dahlan have resisted taking action against militants, seeking instead to persuade them to abide by a unilateral suspension of attacks on Israelis declared on June 29. The bombing tonight occurred as Mr. Abbas was meeting in Gaza City with leaders of Islamic Jihad in an attempt to extend the cease-fire, which was to last three months.
Mr. Abbas was scheduled to meet on Wednesday with leaders of Hamas, but he canceled that meeting after the bombing.
Since June 29, Hamas has claimed responsibility for only one other lethal suicide bombing, killing one Israeli a week ago in stated retaliation for Israel's killing days earlier of two Hamas militants. Saying that terrorists are using their declared cease-fire to re-arm, Israel has continued to raid Palestinian towns and cities in recent weeks for what it says are wanted terrorists.
In a videotaped statement, the bomber who committed the attack tonight attributed it primarily to an incident that took place before the cease-fire was declared, the army's killing in June of a local Hamas leader in Hebron.
Fireworks burst over Hebron tonight as Palestinians there celebrated the bombing.
Militants from Islamic Jihad and the Hamas submitted competing claims of responsibility for the attack. Although political leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip denied any link to the bombing, the Israeli police, which recovered an identity card of the bomber at the scene, said that he was connected to Hamas. "He's identified as Hamas," said Superintendent Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman. He said that it was possible the two groups were acting together.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, a Hamas cell released a printed statement claiming the attack, as well as a videotape of the man that Israel said carried it out.
In the videotape, the man identified as the bomber, Raed Abdul Hamid Misk, 29, appeared with a rifle in one hand and a Koran in the other. "We are proud to offer ourselves and our lives and our houses as a present to this religion," he said in Arabic. Switching to English, he said, "The people of Palestine commit themselves to cease-fire, but the criminal Sharon refused this commitment and killed many people in Palestine."
Mr. Misk was working toward a master's degree from A-Najah university in the West Bank city of Nablus, his family said.
Mr. Misk left behind two children and a wife, Arij Joubeh, in the sixth month of pregnancy. She said of her husband, "All his life he was saying, 'Oh God, I wish to be a martyr.'"
Members of Mr. Misk's extended family were hastily removing possessions from their family home tonight in anticipation of its demolition by Israeli forces, a standard Israeli reprisal for suicide attacks.
Mr. Misk detonated his explosive about 9:15 p.m. near the middle of the articulated No. 2 bus. The bus had just crossed the boundary from east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war, and had entered the west Jerusalem neighborhood of Shmuel Hanavi, home to devoutly religious Jews.
On March 2, 2002, a suicide bomber struck about a block away, killing nine Israelis, including six children.
There were many children aboard the bus this evening, survivors said. Zvi Weiss, 18, a seminary student from Borough Park, Brooklyn, said he was sitting in the second row, squeezed in with three children. One of the children had been left in a vacant seat by his mother, who then pushed the baby carriage toward the back of the bus, he said.
"His mother was in the back, so I think - I don't know what to think," Mr. Weiss said. He said he leaped through a window and ran as the explosion enveloped him in "smoke, noise, the smell of fire." He was being treated in Bikur Holim hospital for shrapnel wounds to his arms, which had stained his white shirtsleeves crimson. He was having trouble hearing, a common difficulty of bombing victims.
Yehiya Luria, 38, said the bus was "so full that you couldn't have put a pin in there." He said he was seated at the far back, and also escaped through a window. "There was a lot of blood on me - blood, bits of flesh, teeth, hair," he said. He was being treated for shock.
"It was a miracle," he said of his survival. "I prayed at the Western Wall today."
Nearby, a 2-year-old boy lay in another hospital bed, holding a white blanket and a foil bag of snacks as he sucked on a red pacifier and silently watched the bustling ward. His aunt said he had been riding in a sedan that smashed into the back of the bus, and that he was slightly wounded. She said his name was Abraham.
Initial reports by the authorities were that five children were among the dead. The police reported removing 18 bodies from the bus. The bodies and body parts were enclosed in black or white plastic bags, which were placed in a traffic circle among three small trees. Investigators opened the bags to take photographs of the dead to identify them.
Generators hummed as emergency workers in the harsh white glare of portable lamps scoured the red-and-white bus for the remains of the dead. In the shadows, hundreds of young men in the white shirts and broad-brimmed black hats of the devoutly religious gathered on the sidewalks and rooftops, outside a police cordon, to survey the scene.
Three hours after the bombing, a spokeswoman for another hospital, Haddassah Ein-Kerem, said no one had claimed a month-old baby boy brought from the scene, raising the possibility that his parents had been killed.
"He is a very sweet 4-week-old baby boy," the spokeswoman, Yael Bosem-Levy, told Israel Radio. "He has light injuries. He has impact wounds to his stomach, and the entire time he has been here he didn't cry even once."
August 20, 2003, New York Times, Bombing Kills 18 and Hurts Scores on Jerusalem Bus, by James Bennet,
A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 18 people, including children, when he detonated an explosive packed with ball bearings tonight aboard a city bus crowded with families, some of them returning from Judaism's holiest site, the Western Wall.
The blast resounded across Jerusalem as it peeled up the roof of the bus and blew out its windows, smearing human remains on a preceding tour bus and opening a deep wound in the American-backed peace effort.
More than 100 people were reported hurt, many seriously, in one of the deadliest attacks in almost three years of conflict. Men carrying blood-spattered children raced toward approaching ambulances. On a street strewn with broken glass and bloodied sheet metal, a man knelt near the shattered bus to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a toddler.
Later, in a hospital here, Yaacov Bahar, 35, held his hands in the air in front of him, as though he were still carrying an infant, as he described helping bring four children from the bus.
"In my eyes, I'm still seeing the nightmare," said Mr. Bahar, who was being treated for shock.
Breaking off security talks tonight, Israel froze all contacts with the Palestinian leadership after the bombing.
A senior Israeli official said Israel would probably seal Palestinians into their cities and towns again on Wednesday, reimposing tight travel restrictions that had been loosened somewhat as the peace effort took hold in recent weeks.
The attack tonight was claimed by members of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Israeli police said the bomber was from Hamas.
Palestinian and Israeli officers had been discussing how Palestinian forces would assume responsibility from Israel for policing two West Bank cities, continuing an exchange of control called for by the peace plan, known as the road map.
But Israeli officials reacted to the bombing with fury tonight, and expressed frustration toward a peace plan they said was endangering their security.
"Israel cannot be the perpetual testing ground for peace proposals that the Palestinians fail to implement," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In Gaza City, the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters, "I declare my strong condemnation of this horrible act that doesn't serve the interests of the Palestinian people." Mr. Abbas said he offered "my real sorrow" to the families of the victims.
Israeli officials noted that Israel had recently softened its own demands on the Palestinian leadership, insisting only that it supervise the people Israel considers terrorists and prevent them from committing new attacks, rather than putting them in jail.
The bombing tonight appeared certain to renew Israeli and American pressure on Mr. Abbas, to take more forceful action against militant groups.
Mr. Abbas said he had ordered his minister of security, Muhammad Dahlan, "to immediately investigate this attack and to take the necessary measures regarding its perpetrators."
Mr. Abbas and Mr. Dahlan have resisted taking action against militants, seeking instead to persuade them to abide by a unilateral suspension of attacks on Israelis declared on June 29. The bombing tonight occurred as Mr. Abbas was meeting in Gaza City with leaders of Islamic Jihad in an effort to extend the cease-fire, which was to last three months.
Mr. Abbas was scheduled to meet on Wednesday with leaders of Hamas, but he canceled that meeting after the bombing.
Since June 29, Hamas has claimed responsibility for only one other lethal suicide bombing, killing one Israeli a week ago in stated retaliation for Israel's killing days earlier of two Hamas militants. Saying that terrorists are using their declared cease-fire to re-arm, Israel has continued to raid Palestinian towns and cities in recent weeks for what it says are wanted terrorists.
In a videotaped statement, the bomber who committed the attack tonight attributed it primarily to an incident that took place before the cease-fire was declared, the army's killing in June of a local Hamas leader in Hebron.
Fireworks burst over Hebron tonight as Palestinians there celebrated the bombing.
Militants from Islamic Jihad and Hamas submitted competing claims of responsibility for the attack. Although political leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip denied any link to the bombing, the Israeli police, which recovered an identity card of the bomber at the scene, said he was connected to Hamas. "He's identified as Hamas," said Superintendent Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman. He said it was possible the two groups were acting together.
Israel killed a leader of Islamic Jihad last week in Hebron and the group has vowed to avenge that death.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, a Hamas cell released a printed statement claiming the attack, as well as a videotape of the man that Israel said carried it out.
In the videotape, the man identified as the bomber, Raed Abdul Hamid Misk, 29, appeared with a rifle in one hand and a Koran in the other. "We are proud to offer ourselves and our lives and our houses as a present to this religion," he said in Arabic. Switching to English, he said, "The people of Palestine commit themselves to cease-fire, but the criminal Sharon refused this commitment and killed many people in Palestine."
Mr. Misk was working toward a master's degree from An-Najah university in the West Bank city of Nablus, his family said.
Mr. Misk left behind two children and a wife, Arij Joubeh, in the sixth month of pregnancy. She said of her husband, "All his life he was saying, 'Oh God, I wish to be a martyr.'"
Members of Mr. Misk's extended family were hastily removing possessions from their family home tonight in anticipation of its demolition by Israeli forces, a standard Israeli reprisal for suicide attacks.
Mr. Misk detonated his explosive about 9:15 p.m. near the middle of the articulated No. 2 bus. The bus had just crossed the boundary from east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war, and had entered the west Jerusalem neighborhood of Shmuel Hanavi, home to devoutly religious Jews.
On March 2, 2002, a suicide bomber struck about a block away, killing nine Israelis, including six children.
There were many children aboard the bus this evening, survivors said. Zvi Weiss, 18, a seminary student from Borough Park, Brooklyn, said he was sitting in the second row, squeezed in with three children. One of the children had been left in a vacant seat by his mother, who then pushed the baby carriage toward the back of the bus, he said.
"His mother was in the back, so I think -- I don't know what to think," Mr. Weiss said. He said he leaped through a window and ran as the explosion enveloped him in "smoke, noise, the smell of fire." He was being treated in Bikur Holim hospital for shrapnel wounds to his arms, which had stained his white shirtsleeves crimson. He was having trouble hearing, a common difficulty of bombing victims.
Yehiya Luria, 38, said the bus was "so full that you couldn't have put a pin in there." He said he was seated at the far back, and also escaped through a window. "There was a lot of blood on me -- blood, bits of flesh, teeth, hair," he said. He was being treated for shock.
"It was a miracle," he said of his survival. "I prayed at the Western Wall today."
Nearby, a 2-year-old boy lay in another hospital bed, holding a white blanket and a foil bag of snacks as he sucked on a red pacifier and silently watched the bustling ward. His aunt said he had been riding in a sedan that smashed into the back of the bus, and that he was slightly wounded. She said his name was Abraham.
Initial reports by the authorities said five children were among the dead. The police reported removing 18 bodies from the bus. The bodies and body parts were enclosed in black or white plastic bags, which were placed in a traffic circle among three small trees. Investigators opened the bags to take photographs of the dead to identify them.
Generators hummed as emergency workers in the harsh white glare of portable lamps scoured the red-and-white bus for the remains of the dead.
In the shadows, hundreds of young men in the white shirts, black coats and broad-brimmed black hats of the devoutly religious gathered on the sidewalks and rooftops, outside a police cordon, to survey the scene.
Three hours after the bombing, a spokeswoman for another hospital, Hadassah Ein-Kerem, said no one had claimed a month-old baby boy brought from the scene, raising the possibility that his parents had been killed.
"He is a very sweet 4-week-old baby boy," the spokeswoman, Yael Bosem-Levy, told Israel Radio. "He has light injuries. He has impact wounds to his stomach, and the entire time he has been here he didn't cry even once."
During Cease-Fire, a Rising Death Toll
In addition to the victims of the bus bombing yesterday in Jerusalem, Israeli-Palestinian violence since the June 29 cease-fire has claimed more than 20 lives in several incidents.
THURSDAY -- Israeli troops kill a local commander of Islamic Jihad, prompting a vow of retaliation from the group.
AUG. 12 -- Two Israelis die in separate suicide bombings claimed by Hamas and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
AUG. 8 -- Three Palestinians and an Israeli soldier are killed in a firefight and ensuing protest.
JULY 28 -- The body of a missing Israeli soldier is found in an olive grove near an Arab village.
JULY 25 -- An Israeli soldier fires a machine gun into a vehicle stopped at a checkpoint, killing a 4-year-old Palestinian boy.
JULY 22 -- Israeli police officers on high alert shoot and kill an unarmed Israeli Arab.
JULY 9 -- A Palestinian gunman is killed during an Israeli raid.
JULY 7 -- A Israeli woman is killed when her home is leveled by a Palestinian suicide bomber.
JULY 5 -- A bomb aimed at an Israeli military post kills a Palestinian.
JULY 3 -- Israeli troops pursue and kill a Palestinian militant.
August 20, 2003. Philadelphia Inquirer, Shattering Attacks IN JERUSALEM Bomb kills 19 in blow to peace Bus bomb kills 19 in Jerusalem, By Michael Matza and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Inquirer Staff Writers,
JERUSALEM — A Palestinian suicide bomber tore apart a bus last night in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, killing himself and at least 18 others, injuring dozens more, and dealing a new blow to a shaky and stalled U.S.-backed peace plan.
The attack was the worst since a cease-fire began nearly two months ago and the two sides set to implementing the multistep peace plan.
The bombing occurred at 9 p.m. on a tandem public bus packed with children still on summer holiday. The blast was so powerful that it blew out windows in another bus nearby. Many of the victims were on their way back from worshiping at the Western Wall in the Old City, one of Judaism's most sacred sites. Some of those killed and many of the wounded were children.
Both Islamic Jihad and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, one of the deadliest Palestinian attacks in the last three years. Islamic Jihad had vowed to retaliate for the slaying of one of its leaders, Mohammed Ayub Sidr, during an Israel Defense Forces raid last Thursday in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, condemned the bus attack. He was meeting with Islamic Jihad leaders in Gaza City at the time of the bombing to discuss extending the cease-fire, or hudna, beyond September. The cease-fire is widely considered crucial to the peace plan, a series of steps each side must take to end the violence and establish a Palestinian state by 2005.
The talks were taking place at a time when the cease-fire was already beginning to fray after a series of small but violent confrontations.
After the bombing, Israeli officials canceled plans to meet with Palestinian security officials to discuss the return of four West Bank cities to Palestinian control. A meeting Friday between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also was canceled.
"While we are reaching out, going the extra mile, we're getting suicide bombers," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled, who rushed to the scene of the attack. "This is a hudna? Targeting a bus of kids coming from the Western Wall?"
"There cannot be a peace process when there is a death process," Sharon adviser Dore Gold told Sky News late last night.
The attack ended any foreseeable discussion on returning the West Bank cities of Qalqilya, Jericho, Tulkarm and Ramallah to Palestinian control. Officials from both sides had said the handover was a significant move forward along the road map, but Palestinians in those cities dismissed it as window dressing.
Sharon and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz planned to meet today to discuss how else Israel would respond to the attack.
The United States called on the Palestinian Authority to take immediate action. "We condemn this act of terrorism in the strongest possible terms," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and the victims."
Members of the ultra-Orthodox volunteer rescue group Zaka, who are usually first on the scene, had been hosting a reception attended by Mofaz and other Defense Ministry officials a few blocks from where the blast occurred, according to the group's director, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav.
His white shirtsleeves bloodied up to his elbows, Meshi-Zahav said he found a 3-month-old baby alive beneath three lifeless adults piled on top of one another.
There were many familiar faces among the dead, he said, all from the neighborhood in which he lives. "You think, 'How will you face the families of the people you identify?' "
He said he would bury the shirt he was wearing. "This is from the blood of many Jews," he said.
Bodies were wrapped in white plastic bags and stacked at a nearby traffic circle.
"I saw little children who had been hurled from the bus," said one of those injured, Avraham Zarbiv, 22, a student at a yeshiva, or religious school. Zarbiv was riding his bicycle alongside the bus when the explosion hit. The force sent him flying.
"I smelled burned flesh. There was silence. There were people sitting in their seats not moving," Zarbiv, his hair singed and his face blackened with soot, said from his bed at Hadassah Hospital in nearby Mount Scopus.
"I saw babies on the ground near the bus," said another patient, Meirav Edri, 19, of Eilat.
A videotape released by Hamas in the West Bank city of Hebron showed a man who called himself Raed Abdel-Hamed Mesk describing how he would carry out the suicide bombing to avenge Israel's killing of one of the group's members.
Islamic Jihad said in a statement to Hezbollah's al Manar television in Lebanon that it carried out the attack, but Islamic Jihad officials meeting with Abbas in the Gaza Strip would not confirm the report.
Israeli professor Shmuel Sandler, speaking hours before the explosion, said each side was taking steps toward peace that did not cost too much.
"Israel released Palestinian prisoners, but not important ones. The Palestinians have so far stayed away from terror," but without dismantling militant groups, said Sandler, a professor at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv who specializes in Arab-Israeli relations.
"The problem is that both sides rushed into this hoping that the process would create the momentum, but the momentum has not been created yet," Sandler said. "Nobody is taking a strategic step; nobody is crossing the Rubicon."
Contact reporter Michael Matza at 215-854-2405 or foreign@phillynews.com.
August 20, 2003, Chicago Tribune, Blasts rock Iraq, Israel, Bus bomb in Jerusalem kills 18, threatens peace process, Ultra-Orthodox Jews targeted, by Joel Greenberg, Special to the Tribune,
JERUSALEM — A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus filled with ultra-Orthodox Jews on Tuesday, killing 18 passengers and injuring more than 100 people, including small children, and dealing a heavy blow to a tenuous cease-fire critical to renewed peace efforts.
The bomb, packed with ball bearings for greater effect, tore apart the No. 2 bus as it entered an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood on the way back from the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. The explosion near the midsection of the tandem bus hurled passengers out of the vehicle, peeled off the roof and scattered body parts across the street.
"I saw many people wounded, little children, babies on the ground near the bus," said Meirav Edri, 19, who was standing nearby. "I saw a woman without a head, without legs, people who were burned. It was indescribable."
The armed wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it revenge for recent Israeli killings of militants. A similar claim was made by Islamic Jihad in a message to a Lebanese television station and to The Associated Press.
After the bombing, Israel suspended talks on the phased handover of four West Bank cities this month to Palestinian control and halted other contacts while the government considered a response.
"We're putting everything on hold until we evaluate the situation," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled. "Is this what you call a cease-fire? While we reach out and go the extra mile, we get more suicide bombings."
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who was meeting militants in Gaza in an effort to maintain the cease-fire, condemned the bombing, calling it "a horrible act which does not serve the interest of the Palestinian people." Abbas said he had instructed his security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, to launch an investigation and he cautioned Israel against retaliation, which he said "will not be in the interest of the peace process."
The White House also denounced the attack. "We condemn this vicious act of terrorism," said U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. "We call upon the Palestinian Authority to dismantle terrorist networks."
In comments just a few hours before the attack, President Bush urged the Palestinian leadership to "dismantle and destroy organizations which are interested in killing innocent lives in order to prevent a peace process from going forward."
The bombing posed a deadly challenge to the American-backed peace plan known as the road map, which outlines steps to end violence and resume negotiations leading to a Palestinian state. Both Israel and the Palestinians have taken steps to carry out the plan, and a cease-fire declared by militant factions on June 29 had led to a significant reduction of violence. But Israeli killings of militants and the renewed bombings by militant groups have threatened to sink the peace effort in a new cycle of strikes and retaliations.
A statement by the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said Tuesday's attack was revenge for recent Israeli killings of militant leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in West Bank raids. The group named the bomber as Raed Abdel Hamid Misek, 29, of Hebron, and released a videotape in which he vowed to carry out his suicide mission. A statement by the group said it remained committed to the cease-fire, but "every violation by our enemy will be met with painful retaliation."
The bomber struck the bus about 9 p.m. on a warm summer night in an area bordering the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Many of those aboard the bus, including parents and their children, were returning from prayers at the Western Wall in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, residents said.
Avraham Zarbiv, 22, a yeshiva student who was slightly injured in the blast, said he was riding his bicycle near the bus.
"I heard a tremendous explosion and I was thrown with the bicycle," he said.
Rescue workers lined up the dead in numbered white body bags on a traffic circle as police officers tagged and photographed the victims. In city hospitals, staff members struggled to identify injured children separated from their parents.
Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, the head of the ultra-Orthodox recovery teams working at the site, said he had found one such child.
"I was moving through the bus, checking for pulses, and under three bodies we found a baby crying, safe and sound," he said.
Meshi-Zahav who lives in the neighborhood, said his crews always respond to suicide attacks, but this time the bombing was close to home, and the victims were familiar.
"You think about how you are going to face the families of the people you identified," he said, his hands and sleeves covered in blood.
August 20, 2003, The Boston Globe, Bomber Hits Bus Carrying Israeli Families 18 Die; 100 Wounded; Children Among Victims, by Charles A. Radin and Dan Ephron, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent,
JERUSALEM - A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up yesterday on a bus crowded with Orthodox Jewish families returning from prayer at the Western Wall, killing 18 people and injuring more than 100 in a terror attack that seemed likely to put an end to a seven-week lull in the war between Israelis and Palestinians.
The huge blast, which occurred around 9 p.m., tore apart a jumbo- size bus traveling through the Shmuel HaNavi
neighborhood of the Israeli capital to the religious neighborhood of Har Nof. A second bus was damaged extensively.
In the aftermath, streets around the bombing scene were filled with bleeding, crying children - their clothes in tatters, their skin charred by the blast - being carried to ambulances by stunned and bloodied parents. Medics worked feverishly over motionless toddlers. Body bags covered a traffic island.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing in anonymous telephone calls to the media. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Hamas's most prominent spokesman, called the bombing "a natural response to the crime of the Zionist occupation" and asserted that it did not violate the unilateral cease-fire declared seven weeks ago by the groups that stage terror attacks against Israel.
Israel's government suspended security talks with the Palestinian Authority and froze plans to withdraw its forces from Palestinian cities occupied after a horrific wave of suicide bombings in spring 2002.
"This so-called cease-fire was a fig leaf for the terrorists to reorganize and rearm themselves," said Yoni Peled, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry. "We're going back to square one until the Palestinian Authority begins to fulfill its commitments" to disarm and obstruct the operations of terrorist groups.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas condemned the bombing and said he was ordering his security minister to launch an investigation. After meetings overnight, Abbas decided today to cut all contacts with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and promised to "take security measures" against their members, Reuters reported.
The White House also condemned the bombing.
At the site of the attack, baby strollers, torn and blood- covered, lay scattered around the bus.
"I think the thing that stood out most was the number of children among the wounded," said Shuki Lavi, a medic with the Magen David Adom emergency unit, which arrived minutes after the blast. "This bombing will be remembered as the attack on the children." Hospital sources said late last night that five of the dead and at least 40 of the wounded were children.
Gilad Book, 21, a paramedic with a local ambulance service, was at a party with co-workers far from the bombing when they heard a blast and everyone's beeper went off. About 20 of them rushed to the scene, where Book worked on a young woman who, bleeding profusely, was repeatedly attempting, and failing, to get up and walk. "You build an emotional wall around yourself" to cope with a paramedic's work, Book said, "but it is not strong enough to deal with terror attacks."
Binyamin Hajbi, 14, said he was supposed to have been on the bus that exploded. He said he decided at the last minute to walk back to the Beit Yisrael neighborhood where he is staying. "I came to Jerusalem for a few days to see people and to pray at the Wall," said Hajbi. "I didn't expect to be in the middle of a bombing."
Yasser Hirbawi, a veteran tour bus driver who was sitting in a parked bus near the explosion, said he was thrown to the floor by the explosion, "and something heavy fell on me. I heard shouts, many people crying out, and then a policeman helped me off the bus and took me away from there."
Hundreds of bystanders stood behind police barricades watching emergency crews gathering body parts and washing blood from the pavement. Among them were guests who attended a bar mitzvah in an adjacent celebration hall.
Odelia Asoulin, who helped cater the bar mitzvah, said she and the other waiters raced out of the hall when they heard the explosion and pulled wounded people from the bus. "We couldn't see inside because of the smoke. Some of the wounded were screaming," said Asoulin, 18.
At Har Hotzvim Hospital in central Jerusalem, where several of the child victims of the attack died, Yitzhak Ferster, whose 18-year-old daughter Yohevet was being treated for her wounds, said, "We need to love each other and not just when things are good, but also when there is a terror attack." Such sentiments are often expressed by the fervently religious Jews known as "haredim," those who tremble before God, after such attacks.
But there also were calls for Israel to respond forcefully.
Michael Ratzon, deputy minister of trade and industry and a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's ruling Likud party, said "we cannot trust or expect the Palestinian Authority" to eliminate terrorist operations in its territories, and he asserted that Israel should do the job itself "to the point of complete surrender of the Palestinians."
Peled, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, talked with reporters a few feet from the burned-out bus. He said Israeli army officers called off a meeting scheduled for yesterday evening with their Palestinian counterparts to discuss Israel's planned pullout from the West Bank town of Qal qilya.
He said Israel probably would not roll back the moves it has made in recent weeks under the US-backed "road map" toward Mideast peace and probably would not move its troops back into Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip, "but there will be nothing more until we can establish that we have a partner for peace" on the other side. He said the Qal qilya withdrawal and other redeployments agreed on late last week were canceled for now.
Palestinian militants sounded ready for another round of warfare with Israel, and it seemed clear Abbas would not be able to satisfy Israeli and American demands, and his own commitment to disarm and disband Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and similar organizations without an armed confrontation - a step Abbas has said he does not intend to take.
Hatem Abdel Qader, of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah Movement, said on the Hezbollah television station in Lebanon that "we think . . . this operation might put an end to the cease-fire."
He said the bombing was an expression of Palestinian frustration at Israeli arrests of militants and the Jewish state's ongoing construction of a fence to separate Israelis and Palestinians. "What more can they do?" Qader said. "The Palestinians do not care what the consequences are."
Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com.
August 20, 2003, Jerusalem Post, At least 18 killed in Jerusalem bus bombing. Many children among victims; both Jihad, Hamas claim responsiblilty, by Etgar Lefkovits, Erik Schechter contributed to this report, Page: 01,
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 -- A Palestinian suicide bomber boarded a packed Jerusalem bus making its way from the Western Wall to Har Nof Tuesday night and blew himself up, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 100 others, a dozen seriously, in one of the deadliest bombings in the past three years of violence.
At least three children were among the dead, rescue workers said, and scores of other youngsters were wounded in the bus blast.
The names of those killed in the attack were not released at press time.
The attack on the No. 2 bus line was the 101st Palestinian suicide bombing in the past 35 months of violence, and came one week after back-to-back bombings in Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel.
The bombing took place just as Israel was set to withdraw from four Palestinian cities in the West Bank as part of a weekend agreement with the Palestinian Authority.
In a first response, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon froze all contacts with the PA late Tuesday night, and the security cabinet was to meet Wednesday to decide on further, more serious, measures in response to the attack.
Initially, the Islamic Jihad took credit for the attack, and asserted it was in revenge for the death of Muhammad Sider, the Hebron leader killed by the IDF last week in a shoot-out. But later in the evening, the 29-year- old bomber was identified as a Hamas member, Raed Abdel- Hamed Mesk from Hebron.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who was meeting with Islamic Jihad officials at the time of the blast, condemned the bombing, calling it a "terrible act which cannot serve the interests of the Palestinian people."
The bomber, wearing what police said was "a large" amount of explosives on his back, likely boarded the bus at the Western Wall, security officials said, blending in with the scores of other passengers making their way home on a cool summer Jerusalem evening.
The blast ripped through the double-length bus just as it turned off Rt. 1, the city's main north-south road, near the Novotel Hotel, in Jerusalem's haredi Beit Shmuel neighborhood. Another Egged bus had just passed it when the suicide bomber set off his explosive charges, which police said were packed with bolts and nails in an effort to create maximum casualties.
The force of the blast tore apart the accordion bus, sending pieces of metal and bloodied body parts flying across the street. Police were forced to use blowtorches to remove the wounded from the bus.
Distraught survivors, including several crying children with blood- smeared faces, were led away from the scene by paramedics, as ambulances rushed the wounded to all four Jerusalem city hospitals.
"Everything became black. I found myself lying on the floor of the bus," recalled a bus passenger, who gave only his first name, Yehoshua, as he was taken to Bikur Holim Hospital.
Over the next hour, half a dozen ambulances arrived at the hospital. Hospital deputy spokesman Shamay Shazeri reported 17 incoming wounded, including four babies.
One of them was US citizen Steve Weiss of Brooklyn, who was lightly wounded and jumped out the window of the bus when the explosion happened.
Jerusalem Police chief Cmdr. Mickey Levy said that there were no specific alerts for an attack in Jerusalem, other than the general alerts that were in place for the remainder of the country.
Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Shlomo Aharonishky announced Tuesday night that police were going on high alert in the wake of the bombing, but reiterated that it was impossible to thwart all attacks.
The bus blast caught many religious families making their way home from evening prayer at the Western Wall.
At Jerusalem's Hadassah-University Hospital at Ein Kerem, officials were seeking the parents of a month-old infant. Hospital officials said it was one of the worst attacks ever in terms of the number of youngsters, children, and toddlers wounded.
The last Jerusalem bombing occurred just over two months ago, when 17 people were killed on another city bus.
August 20, 2003, The Washington Post, 18 Killed, More Than 100 Injured, by Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson,
A Palestinian bomber triggered a massive, fiery explosion tonight aboard a crowded double-cabin bus in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, killing himself and at least 18 other people and injuring more than 100.
At least five of the dead and 40 of the wounded were children, the Associated Press reported, and Israeli television showed grim scenes of small bodies being rushed to waiting ambulances. Hospital emergency rooms were crammed with crying, bleeding toddlers and panicked parents.
Streets were littered with body parts, clothing, shattered glass and charred debris from the blast, which occurred at 9:10 p.m. and echoed across much of the city.
The attack was the fourth and deadliest Palestinian suicide bombing since June 29, when the three principal Palestinian militant groups unilaterally declared a three-month moratorium on attacks against Israelis. The number of attacks since then and the scale of tonight's explosion cast serious doubt on the cease-fire -- which Israeli officials have derided as a ruse -- and left in question the future of a shaky, U.S.-backed peace plan called the "road map," which has been stalled for weeks.
Gideon Meir, a senior official in Israel's Foreign Ministry, said tonight that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had ordered a "freeze on all contacts with the Palestinians for the time being and a freeze on all planned gestures," including a proposal being readied this week to transfer security authority for the West Bank cities of Jericho and Qalqilyah to Palestinian security forces.
[The Israeli army announced early Wednesday a general closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an army spokeswoman said. "No Palestinian can enter Israel," she said, adding that security forces had imposed "a tight encirclement of the cities" in the West Bank.]
Two of the Palestinian groups that had agreed to the cease-fire -- the Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas -- asserted responsibility for tonight's attack, and both named the bomber as Raed Abdul Hamid Misk, 29, from the West Bank city of Hebron. Israeli police said his identification was found aboard the bus.
"Our feeling is we are back to where we were before: We have no partner on the Palestinian side who can fight terrorism and carry out the road map," a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Jonathan Peled, said at the scene of the bombing. For negotiations to resume, he said, the Palestinians have to "show us some terrorists behind bars, terrorist organizations dismantled and illegal weapons confiscated."
"It's not the end of the road map," he said, "but it's very clear only one side is working for peace."
[A senior Palestinian official said early Wednesday that after a series of high-level meetings between Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his top cabinet ministers and security advisers, the Palestinian Authority had "severed all contacts and dialogue with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and is holding them responsible for harming the national interests of the Palestinian people."
The official said "the Palestinian security apparatus has decided to take a set of measures against the groups" but he declined to elaborate.]
In Gaza City, Abbas condemned the attack as a "horrible act which does not serve the interest of the Palestinian people at all." He ordered Palestinian security officials to investigate the bombing and warned Israel that retaliation "would not be in the interest of the peace process."
Abbas was in Gaza to meet with senior leaders from various Palestinian factions -- including Hamas and Fatah, the political movement headed by the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat -- to persuade them to shore up and extend the fragile 51-day-old truce. Abbas has said the cease-fire is critical to maintaining a peaceful atmosphere for continuing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
In asserting responsibility for today's blast, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad said the attack was in retaliation for the Israeli army's killing of their leaders in Hebron -- Islamic Jihad's Mohammed Sidr, who was killed in a firefight with Israeli soldiers five days earlier, and Abdullah Kawasme of Hamas, who was killed by Israeli troops on June 21, eight days before the cease-fire was announced.
A statement by Hamas insisted that the group was committed to the cease-fire, "but every violation by our enemy will be responded to with painful retaliation."
In Gaza, Hamas political leader Ismail Abu Shanab told reporters that the bombing was a reaction to "the continuing Israeli violations of the truce. We have declared the truce, but Israel has continued the killings and arrests."
Tonight's attack occurred across from the Synagogue of the Jews of the Caucasus on Shmuel Hanavi Street in the Beit Israel neighborhood, just north of the Jerusalem's Old City. The bomber boarded a packed Egged No. 2 articulated bus, which many ultra-Orthodox Jews take home after prayers at the Old City's Western Wall. Police reportedly were investigating whether the bomber had disguised himself as an observant Jew.
The blast left a gaping hole in the roof of the bus and blew out the sides and windows. Rescue workers led disoriented survivors to ambulances packed with wide-eyed, bloody children. Bikur Holim Hospital reported receiving 29 injured people, including six children under age 4. At Hadassah Hospital, officials said they were treating 11 children, the youngest 1 month old.
August 23, 2003, The Economist (US), After the Jerusalem bomb; Israel and the Palestinians,
A bus returning from prayer
The ceasefire, already broken, is now in tatters. Yet the Palestinian Authority has promised to take action against Islamic militants
BACK to war. On August 21st, an Israeli helicopter attack on Gaza city killed Ismail abu Shanab, a senior Hamas leader. Hamas vowed revenge, announcing itself released from the so-called ceasefire.
The Israeli army's attack, on West Bank cities as well as on Gaza, was in reprisal for a gruesome suicide bombing in Jerusalem that, two days earlier, had killed 20 passengers on a crowded bus. Ministers said there would be sustained military action aimed chiefly at Hamas, unless the Palestinians themselves moved against the Islamist organisations. The Palestinian Authority (PA), under intense pressure from America, announced a series of stern measures against Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The bomber, a 29-year-old imam in a Hebron mosque, married with a family of his own, chose a double-compartment bus crammed with Orthodox families returning from prayers at the Western Wall. The carnage was horrendous, with infants among the dead and wounded. It was by far the bloodiest attack since the shaky ceasefire took effect in early July.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Hebron vied to claim responsibility. They said it was a response to the killing by Israel last week of the Islamic Jihad commander in the city, Muhammad Sidr. The Israelis claim they intended only to arrest Mr Sidr. From now on, however, the policy of "targeted killings" is clearly being pursued.
In Gaza, prominent militants quickly went underground, fearing both Israeli rockets and the security forces of Muhammad Dahlan, the PA's minister of defence. The PA must take action now, the American State Department declared on August 20th, "to dismantle the capabilities of the terrorist groups". Colin Powell, the secretary of state, made the point forcefully in phone calls to the prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas. If you act, he promised, the Israelis will hold off.
Moderate Israeli ministers delivered the same message. "It's now or never for Mr Abbas," said the minister of justice and Shinui Party leader, Yosif Lapid. Hardliners scoffed at any such expectation. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the National Union and minister of transport, suggested bombing Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah "with everyone in it".
Its mind thus concentrated, the Palestinian cabinet resolved to arrest Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives, to shut down their newspapers and to assert tight control over their mosques, schools and welfare agencies. On the night of August 21st, Mr Abbas and his ministers presented their proposals to Mr Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organisation executive in Ramallah. The prime minister threatened to resign unless he was given full control over the PA's security apparatus. The executive solemnly resolved that all Palestinians must obey the PA. Illegal weapons would be rounded up. Armed demonstrations would not be allowed. Outside, there was the rumble of Israeli tanks.
August 20, 2003, New York Times, Bombing Kills 18 and Hurts Scores on Jerusalem Bus, by James Bennet,
A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least 18 people, including children, when he detonated an explosive packed with ball bearings tonight aboard a city bus crowded with families, some of them returning from Judaism's holiest site, the Western Wall.
The blast resounded across Jerusalem as it peeled up the roof of the bus and blew out its windows, smearing human remains on a preceding tour bus and opening a deep wound in the American-backed peace effort.
More than 100 people were reported hurt, many seriously, in one of the deadliest attacks in almost three years of conflict. Men carrying blood-spattered children raced toward approaching ambulances. On a street strewn with broken glass and bloodied sheet metal, a man knelt near the shattered bus to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a toddler.
Later, in a hospital here, Yaacov Bahar, 35, held his hands in the air in front of him, as though he were still carrying an infant, as he described helping bring four children from the bus.
"In my eyes, I'm still seeing the nightmare," said Mr. Bahar, who was being treated for shock.
Breaking off security talks tonight, Israel froze all contacts with the Palestinian leadership after the bombing.
A senior Israeli official said Israel would probably seal Palestinians into their cities and towns again on Wednesday, reimposing tight travel restrictions that had been loosened somewhat as the peace effort took hold in recent weeks.
The attack tonight was claimed by members of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Israeli police said the bomber was from Hamas.
Palestinian and Israeli officers had been discussing how Palestinian forces would assume responsibility from Israel for policing two West Bank cities, continuing an exchange of control called for by the peace plan, known as the road map.
But Israeli officials reacted to the bombing with fury tonight, and expressed frustration toward a peace plan they said was endangering their security.
"Israel cannot be the perpetual testing ground for peace proposals that the Palestinians fail to implement," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In Gaza City, the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters, "I declare my strong condemnation of this horrible act that doesn't serve the interests of the Palestinian people." Mr. Abbas said he offered "my real sorrow" to the families of the victims.
Israeli officials noted that Israel had recently softened its own demands on the Palestinian leadership, insisting only that it supervise the people Israel considers terrorists and prevent them from committing new attacks, rather than putting them in jail.
The bombing tonight appeared certain to renew Israeli and American pressure on Mr. Abbas, to take more forceful action against militant groups.
Mr. Abbas said he had ordered his minister of security, Muhammad Dahlan, "to immediately investigate this attack and to take the necessary measures regarding its perpetrators."
Mr. Abbas and Mr. Dahlan have resisted taking action against militants, seeking instead to persuade them to abide by a unilateral suspension of attacks on Israelis declared on June 29. The bombing tonight occurred as Mr. Abbas was meeting in Gaza City with leaders of Islamic Jihad in an effort to extend the cease-fire, which was to last three months.
Mr. Abbas was scheduled to meet on Wednesday with leaders of Hamas, but he canceled that meeting after the bombing.
Since June 29, Hamas has claimed responsibility for only one other lethal suicide bombing, killing one Israeli a week ago in stated retaliation for Israel's killing days earlier of two Hamas militants. Saying that terrorists are using their declared cease-fire to re-arm, Israel has continued to raid Palestinian towns and cities in recent weeks for what it says are wanted terrorists.
In a videotaped statement, the bomber who committed the attack tonight attributed it primarily to an incident that took place before the cease-fire was declared, the army's killing in June of a local Hamas leader in Hebron.
Fireworks burst over Hebron tonight as Palestinians there celebrated the bombing.
Militants from Islamic Jihad and Hamas submitted competing claims of responsibility for the attack. Although political leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip denied any link to the bombing, the Israeli police, which recovered an identity card of the bomber at the scene, said he was connected to Hamas. "He's identified as Hamas," said Superintendent Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman. He said it was possible the two groups were acting together.
Israel killed a leader of Islamic Jihad last week in Hebron and the group has vowed to avenge that death.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, a Hamas cell released a printed statement claiming the attack, as well as a videotape of the man that Israel said carried it out.
In the videotape, the man identified as the bomber, Raed Abdul Hamid Misk, 29, appeared with a rifle in one hand and a Koran in the other. "We are proud to offer ourselves and our lives and our houses as a present to this religion," he said in Arabic. Switching to English, he said, "The people of Palestine commit themselves to cease-fire, but the criminal Sharon refused this commitment and killed many people in Palestine."
Mr. Misk was working toward a master's degree from An-Najah university in the West Bank city of Nablus, his family said.
Mr. Misk left behind two children and a wife, Arij Joubeh, in the sixth month of pregnancy. She said of her husband, "All his life he was saying, 'Oh God, I wish to be a martyr.'"
Members of Mr. Misk's extended family were hastily removing possessions from their family home tonight in anticipation of its demolition by Israeli forces, a standard Israeli reprisal for suicide attacks.
Mr. Misk detonated his explosive about 9:15 p.m. near the middle of the articulated No. 2 bus. The bus had just crossed the boundary from east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war, and had entered the west Jerusalem neighborhood of Shmuel Hanavi, home to devoutly religious Jews.
On March 2, 2002, a suicide bomber struck about a block away, killing nine Israelis, including six children.
There were many children aboard the bus this evening, survivors said. Zvi Weiss, 18, a seminary student from Borough Park, Brooklyn, said he was sitting in the second row, squeezed in with three children. One of the children had been left in a vacant seat by his mother, who then pushed the baby carriage toward the back of the bus, he said.
"His mother was in the back, so I think -- I don't know what to think," Mr. Weiss said. He said he leaped through a window and ran as the explosion enveloped him in "smoke, noise, the smell of fire." He was being treated in Bikur Holim hospital for shrapnel wounds to his arms, which had stained his white shirtsleeves crimson. He was having trouble hearing, a common difficulty of bombing victims.
Yehiya Luria, 38, said the bus was "so full that you couldn't have put a pin in there." He said he was seated at the far back, and also escaped through a window. "There was a lot of blood on me -- blood, bits of flesh, teeth, hair," he said. He was being treated for shock.
"It was a miracle," he said of his survival. "I prayed at the Western Wall today."
Nearby, a 2-year-old boy lay in another hospital bed, holding a white blanket and a foil bag of snacks as he sucked on a red pacifier and silently watched the bustling ward. His aunt said he had been riding in a sedan that smashed into the back of the bus, and that he was slightly wounded. She said his name was Abraham.
Initial reports by the authorities said five children were among the dead. The police reported removing 18 bodies from the bus. The bodies and body parts were enclosed in black or white plastic bags, which were placed in a traffic circle among three small trees. Investigators opened the bags to take photographs of the dead to identify them.
Generators hummed as emergency workers in the harsh white glare of portable lamps scoured the red-and-white bus for the remains of the dead.
In the shadows, hundreds of young men in the white shirts, black coats and broad-brimmed black hats of the devoutly religious gathered on the sidewalks and rooftops, outside a police cordon, to survey the scene.
Three hours after the bombing, a spokeswoman for another hospital, Hadassah Ein-Kerem, said no one had claimed a month-old baby boy brought from the scene, raising the possibility that his parents had been killed.
"He is a very sweet 4-week-old baby boy," the spokeswoman, Yael Bosem-Levy, told Israel Radio. "He has light injuries. He has impact wounds to his stomach, and the entire time he has been here he didn't cry even once."
During Cease-Fire, a Rising Death Toll
In addition to the victims of the bus bombing yesterday in Jerusalem, Israeli-Palestinian violence since the June 29 cease-fire has claimed more than 20 lives in several incidents.
THURSDAY -- Israeli troops kill a local commander of Islamic Jihad, prompting a vow of retaliation from the group.
AUG. 12 -- Two Israelis die in separate suicide bombings claimed by Hamas and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
AUG. 8 -- Three Palestinians and an Israeli soldier are killed in a firefight and ensuing protest.
JULY 28 -- The body of a missing Israeli soldier is found in an olive grove near an Arab village.
JULY 25 -- An Israeli soldier fires a machine gun into a vehicle stopped at a checkpoint, killing a 4-year-old Palestinian boy.
JULY 22 -- Israeli police officers on high alert shoot and kill an unarmed Israeli Arab.
JULY 9 -- A Palestinian gunman is killed during an Israeli raid.
JULY 7 -- A Israeli woman is killed when her home is leveled by a Palestinian suicide bomber.
JULY 5 -- A bomb aimed at an Israeli military post kills a Palestinian.
JULY 3 -- Israeli troops pursue and kill a Palestinian militant.
August 20, 2003. Philadelphia Inquirer, Shattering Attacks IN JERUSALEM Bomb kills 19 in blow to peace Bus bomb kills 19 in Jerusalem, By Michael Matza and Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Inquirer Staff Writers,
JERUSALEM — A Palestinian suicide bomber tore apart a bus last night in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, killing himself and at least 18 others, injuring dozens more, and dealing a new blow to a shaky and stalled U.S.-backed peace plan.
The attack was the worst since a cease-fire began nearly two months ago and the two sides set to implementing the multistep peace plan.
The bombing occurred at 9 p.m. on a tandem public bus packed with children still on summer holiday. The blast was so powerful that it blew out windows in another bus nearby. Many of the victims were on their way back from worshiping at the Western Wall in the Old City, one of Judaism's most sacred sites. Some of those killed and many of the wounded were children.
Both Islamic Jihad and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, one of the deadliest Palestinian attacks in the last three years. Islamic Jihad had vowed to retaliate for the slaying of one of its leaders, Mohammed Ayub Sidr, during an Israel Defense Forces raid last Thursday in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, condemned the bus attack. He was meeting with Islamic Jihad leaders in Gaza City at the time of the bombing to discuss extending the cease-fire, or hudna, beyond September. The cease-fire is widely considered crucial to the peace plan, a series of steps each side must take to end the violence and establish a Palestinian state by 2005.
The talks were taking place at a time when the cease-fire was already beginning to fray after a series of small but violent confrontations.
After the bombing, Israeli officials canceled plans to meet with Palestinian security officials to discuss the return of four West Bank cities to Palestinian control. A meeting Friday between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also was canceled.
"While we are reaching out, going the extra mile, we're getting suicide bombers," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled, who rushed to the scene of the attack. "This is a hudna? Targeting a bus of kids coming from the Western Wall?"
"There cannot be a peace process when there is a death process," Sharon adviser Dore Gold told Sky News late last night.
The attack ended any foreseeable discussion on returning the West Bank cities of Qalqilya, Jericho, Tulkarm and Ramallah to Palestinian control. Officials from both sides had said the handover was a significant move forward along the road map, but Palestinians in those cities dismissed it as window dressing.
Sharon and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz planned to meet today to discuss how else Israel would respond to the attack.
The United States called on the Palestinian Authority to take immediate action. "We condemn this act of terrorism in the strongest possible terms," White House spokesman Sean McCormack said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and the victims."
Members of the ultra-Orthodox volunteer rescue group Zaka, who are usually first on the scene, had been hosting a reception attended by Mofaz and other Defense Ministry officials a few blocks from where the blast occurred, according to the group's director, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav.
His white shirtsleeves bloodied up to his elbows, Meshi-Zahav said he found a 3-month-old baby alive beneath three lifeless adults piled on top of one another.
There were many familiar faces among the dead, he said, all from the neighborhood in which he lives. "You think, 'How will you face the families of the people you identify?' "
He said he would bury the shirt he was wearing. "This is from the blood of many Jews," he said.
Bodies were wrapped in white plastic bags and stacked at a nearby traffic circle.
"I saw little children who had been hurled from the bus," said one of those injured, Avraham Zarbiv, 22, a student at a yeshiva, or religious school. Zarbiv was riding his bicycle alongside the bus when the explosion hit. The force sent him flying.
"I smelled burned flesh. There was silence. There were people sitting in their seats not moving," Zarbiv, his hair singed and his face blackened with soot, said from his bed at Hadassah Hospital in nearby Mount Scopus.
"I saw babies on the ground near the bus," said another patient, Meirav Edri, 19, of Eilat.
A videotape released by Hamas in the West Bank city of Hebron showed a man who called himself Raed Abdel-Hamed Mesk describing how he would carry out the suicide bombing to avenge Israel's killing of one of the group's members.
Islamic Jihad said in a statement to Hezbollah's al Manar television in Lebanon that it carried out the attack, but Islamic Jihad officials meeting with Abbas in the Gaza Strip would not confirm the report.
Israeli professor Shmuel Sandler, speaking hours before the explosion, said each side was taking steps toward peace that did not cost too much.
"Israel released Palestinian prisoners, but not important ones. The Palestinians have so far stayed away from terror," but without dismantling militant groups, said Sandler, a professor at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv who specializes in Arab-Israeli relations.
"The problem is that both sides rushed into this hoping that the process would create the momentum, but the momentum has not been created yet," Sandler said. "Nobody is taking a strategic step; nobody is crossing the Rubicon."
Contact reporter Michael Matza at 215-854-2405 or foreign@phillynews.com.
August 20, 2003, Chicago Tribune, Blasts rock Iraq, Israel, Bus bomb in Jerusalem kills 18, threatens peace process, Ultra-Orthodox Jews targeted, by Joel Greenberg, Special to the Tribune,
JERUSALEM — A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus filled with ultra-Orthodox Jews on Tuesday, killing 18 passengers and injuring more than 100 people, including small children, and dealing a heavy blow to a tenuous cease-fire critical to renewed peace efforts.
The bomb, packed with ball bearings for greater effect, tore apart the No. 2 bus as it entered an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood on the way back from the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. The explosion near the midsection of the tandem bus hurled passengers out of the vehicle, peeled off the roof and scattered body parts across the street.
"I saw many people wounded, little children, babies on the ground near the bus," said Meirav Edri, 19, who was standing nearby. "I saw a woman without a head, without legs, people who were burned. It was indescribable."
The armed wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it revenge for recent Israeli killings of militants. A similar claim was made by Islamic Jihad in a message to a Lebanese television station and to The Associated Press.
After the bombing, Israel suspended talks on the phased handover of four West Bank cities this month to Palestinian control and halted other contacts while the government considered a response.
"We're putting everything on hold until we evaluate the situation," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled. "Is this what you call a cease-fire? While we reach out and go the extra mile, we get more suicide bombings."
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who was meeting militants in Gaza in an effort to maintain the cease-fire, condemned the bombing, calling it "a horrible act which does not serve the interest of the Palestinian people." Abbas said he had instructed his security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, to launch an investigation and he cautioned Israel against retaliation, which he said "will not be in the interest of the peace process."
The White House also denounced the attack. "We condemn this vicious act of terrorism," said U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. "We call upon the Palestinian Authority to dismantle terrorist networks."
In comments just a few hours before the attack, President Bush urged the Palestinian leadership to "dismantle and destroy organizations which are interested in killing innocent lives in order to prevent a peace process from going forward."
The bombing posed a deadly challenge to the American-backed peace plan known as the road map, which outlines steps to end violence and resume negotiations leading to a Palestinian state. Both Israel and the Palestinians have taken steps to carry out the plan, and a cease-fire declared by militant factions on June 29 had led to a significant reduction of violence. But Israeli killings of militants and the renewed bombings by militant groups have threatened to sink the peace effort in a new cycle of strikes and retaliations.
A statement by the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said Tuesday's attack was revenge for recent Israeli killings of militant leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in West Bank raids. The group named the bomber as Raed Abdel Hamid Misek, 29, of Hebron, and released a videotape in which he vowed to carry out his suicide mission. A statement by the group said it remained committed to the cease-fire, but "every violation by our enemy will be met with painful retaliation."
The bomber struck the bus about 9 p.m. on a warm summer night in an area bordering the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Many of those aboard the bus, including parents and their children, were returning from prayers at the Western Wall in the walled Old City of Jerusalem, residents said.
Avraham Zarbiv, 22, a yeshiva student who was slightly injured in the blast, said he was riding his bicycle near the bus.
"I heard a tremendous explosion and I was thrown with the bicycle," he said.
Rescue workers lined up the dead in numbered white body bags on a traffic circle as police officers tagged and photographed the victims. In city hospitals, staff members struggled to identify injured children separated from their parents.
Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, the head of the ultra-Orthodox recovery teams working at the site, said he had found one such child.
"I was moving through the bus, checking for pulses, and under three bodies we found a baby crying, safe and sound," he said.
Meshi-Zahav who lives in the neighborhood, said his crews always respond to suicide attacks, but this time the bombing was close to home, and the victims were familiar.
"You think about how you are going to face the families of the people you identified," he said, his hands and sleeves covered in blood.
August 20, 2003, The Boston Globe, Bomber Hits Bus Carrying Israeli Families 18 Die; 100 Wounded; Children Among Victims, by Charles A. Radin and Dan Ephron, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent,
JERUSALEM - A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up yesterday on a bus crowded with Orthodox Jewish families returning from prayer at the Western Wall, killing 18 people and injuring more than 100 in a terror attack that seemed likely to put an end to a seven-week lull in the war between Israelis and Palestinians.
The huge blast, which occurred around 9 p.m., tore apart a jumbo- size bus traveling through the Shmuel HaNavi
neighborhood of the Israeli capital to the religious neighborhood of Har Nof. A second bus was damaged extensively.
In the aftermath, streets around the bombing scene were filled with bleeding, crying children - their clothes in tatters, their skin charred by the blast - being carried to ambulances by stunned and bloodied parents. Medics worked feverishly over motionless toddlers. Body bags covered a traffic island.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing in anonymous telephone calls to the media. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Hamas's most prominent spokesman, called the bombing "a natural response to the crime of the Zionist occupation" and asserted that it did not violate the unilateral cease-fire declared seven weeks ago by the groups that stage terror attacks against Israel.
Israel's government suspended security talks with the Palestinian Authority and froze plans to withdraw its forces from Palestinian cities occupied after a horrific wave of suicide bombings in spring 2002.
"This so-called cease-fire was a fig leaf for the terrorists to reorganize and rearm themselves," said Yoni Peled, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry. "We're going back to square one until the Palestinian Authority begins to fulfill its commitments" to disarm and obstruct the operations of terrorist groups.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas condemned the bombing and said he was ordering his security minister to launch an investigation. After meetings overnight, Abbas decided today to cut all contacts with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and promised to "take security measures" against their members, Reuters reported.
The White House also condemned the bombing.
At the site of the attack, baby strollers, torn and blood- covered, lay scattered around the bus.
"I think the thing that stood out most was the number of children among the wounded," said Shuki Lavi, a medic with the Magen David Adom emergency unit, which arrived minutes after the blast. "This bombing will be remembered as the attack on the children." Hospital sources said late last night that five of the dead and at least 40 of the wounded were children.
Gilad Book, 21, a paramedic with a local ambulance service, was at a party with co-workers far from the bombing when they heard a blast and everyone's beeper went off. About 20 of them rushed to the scene, where Book worked on a young woman who, bleeding profusely, was repeatedly attempting, and failing, to get up and walk. "You build an emotional wall around yourself" to cope with a paramedic's work, Book said, "but it is not strong enough to deal with terror attacks."
Binyamin Hajbi, 14, said he was supposed to have been on the bus that exploded. He said he decided at the last minute to walk back to the Beit Yisrael neighborhood where he is staying. "I came to Jerusalem for a few days to see people and to pray at the Wall," said Hajbi. "I didn't expect to be in the middle of a bombing."
Yasser Hirbawi, a veteran tour bus driver who was sitting in a parked bus near the explosion, said he was thrown to the floor by the explosion, "and something heavy fell on me. I heard shouts, many people crying out, and then a policeman helped me off the bus and took me away from there."
Hundreds of bystanders stood behind police barricades watching emergency crews gathering body parts and washing blood from the pavement. Among them were guests who attended a bar mitzvah in an adjacent celebration hall.
Odelia Asoulin, who helped cater the bar mitzvah, said she and the other waiters raced out of the hall when they heard the explosion and pulled wounded people from the bus. "We couldn't see inside because of the smoke. Some of the wounded were screaming," said Asoulin, 18.
At Har Hotzvim Hospital in central Jerusalem, where several of the child victims of the attack died, Yitzhak Ferster, whose 18-year-old daughter Yohevet was being treated for her wounds, said, "We need to love each other and not just when things are good, but also when there is a terror attack." Such sentiments are often expressed by the fervently religious Jews known as "haredim," those who tremble before God, after such attacks.
But there also were calls for Israel to respond forcefully.
Michael Ratzon, deputy minister of trade and industry and a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's ruling Likud party, said "we cannot trust or expect the Palestinian Authority" to eliminate terrorist operations in its territories, and he asserted that Israel should do the job itself "to the point of complete surrender of the Palestinians."
Peled, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, talked with reporters a few feet from the burned-out bus. He said Israeli army officers called off a meeting scheduled for yesterday evening with their Palestinian counterparts to discuss Israel's planned pullout from the West Bank town of Qal qilya.
He said Israel probably would not roll back the moves it has made in recent weeks under the US-backed "road map" toward Mideast peace and probably would not move its troops back into Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip, "but there will be nothing more until we can establish that we have a partner for peace" on the other side. He said the Qal qilya withdrawal and other redeployments agreed on late last week were canceled for now.
Palestinian militants sounded ready for another round of warfare with Israel, and it seemed clear Abbas would not be able to satisfy Israeli and American demands, and his own commitment to disarm and disband Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and similar organizations without an armed confrontation - a step Abbas has said he does not intend to take.
Hatem Abdel Qader, of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah Movement, said on the Hezbollah television station in Lebanon that "we think . . . this operation might put an end to the cease-fire."
He said the bombing was an expression of Palestinian frustration at Israeli arrests of militants and the Jewish state's ongoing construction of a fence to separate Israelis and Palestinians. "What more can they do?" Qader said. "The Palestinians do not care what the consequences are."
Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com.
August 20, 2003, Jerusalem Post, At least 18 killed in Jerusalem bus bombing. Many children among victims; both Jihad, Hamas claim responsiblilty, by Etgar Lefkovits, Erik Schechter contributed to this report, Page: 01,
Wednesday, August 20, 2003 -- A Palestinian suicide bomber boarded a packed Jerusalem bus making its way from the Western Wall to Har Nof Tuesday night and blew himself up, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 100 others, a dozen seriously, in one of the deadliest bombings in the past three years of violence.
At least three children were among the dead, rescue workers said, and scores of other youngsters were wounded in the bus blast.
The names of those killed in the attack were not released at press time.
The attack on the No. 2 bus line was the 101st Palestinian suicide bombing in the past 35 months of violence, and came one week after back-to-back bombings in Rosh Ha'ayin and Ariel.
The bombing took place just as Israel was set to withdraw from four Palestinian cities in the West Bank as part of a weekend agreement with the Palestinian Authority.
In a first response, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon froze all contacts with the PA late Tuesday night, and the security cabinet was to meet Wednesday to decide on further, more serious, measures in response to the attack.
Initially, the Islamic Jihad took credit for the attack, and asserted it was in revenge for the death of Muhammad Sider, the Hebron leader killed by the IDF last week in a shoot-out. But later in the evening, the 29-year- old bomber was identified as a Hamas member, Raed Abdel- Hamed Mesk from Hebron.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who was meeting with Islamic Jihad officials at the time of the blast, condemned the bombing, calling it a "terrible act which cannot serve the interests of the Palestinian people."
The bomber, wearing what police said was "a large" amount of explosives on his back, likely boarded the bus at the Western Wall, security officials said, blending in with the scores of other passengers making their way home on a cool summer Jerusalem evening.
The blast ripped through the double-length bus just as it turned off Rt. 1, the city's main north-south road, near the Novotel Hotel, in Jerusalem's haredi Beit Shmuel neighborhood. Another Egged bus had just passed it when the suicide bomber set off his explosive charges, which police said were packed with bolts and nails in an effort to create maximum casualties.
The force of the blast tore apart the accordion bus, sending pieces of metal and bloodied body parts flying across the street. Police were forced to use blowtorches to remove the wounded from the bus.
Distraught survivors, including several crying children with blood- smeared faces, were led away from the scene by paramedics, as ambulances rushed the wounded to all four Jerusalem city hospitals.
"Everything became black. I found myself lying on the floor of the bus," recalled a bus passenger, who gave only his first name, Yehoshua, as he was taken to Bikur Holim Hospital.
Over the next hour, half a dozen ambulances arrived at the hospital. Hospital deputy spokesman Shamay Shazeri reported 17 incoming wounded, including four babies.
One of them was US citizen Steve Weiss of Brooklyn, who was lightly wounded and jumped out the window of the bus when the explosion happened.
Jerusalem Police chief Cmdr. Mickey Levy said that there were no specific alerts for an attack in Jerusalem, other than the general alerts that were in place for the remainder of the country.
Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Shlomo Aharonishky announced Tuesday night that police were going on high alert in the wake of the bombing, but reiterated that it was impossible to thwart all attacks.
The bus blast caught many religious families making their way home from evening prayer at the Western Wall.
At Jerusalem's Hadassah-University Hospital at Ein Kerem, officials were seeking the parents of a month-old infant. Hospital officials said it was one of the worst attacks ever in terms of the number of youngsters, children, and toddlers wounded.
The last Jerusalem bombing occurred just over two months ago, when 17 people were killed on another city bus.
August 20, 2003, The Washington Post, 18 Killed, More Than 100 Injured, by Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson,
A Palestinian bomber triggered a massive, fiery explosion tonight aboard a crowded double-cabin bus in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, killing himself and at least 18 other people and injuring more than 100.
At least five of the dead and 40 of the wounded were children, the Associated Press reported, and Israeli television showed grim scenes of small bodies being rushed to waiting ambulances. Hospital emergency rooms were crammed with crying, bleeding toddlers and panicked parents.
Streets were littered with body parts, clothing, shattered glass and charred debris from the blast, which occurred at 9:10 p.m. and echoed across much of the city.
The attack was the fourth and deadliest Palestinian suicide bombing since June 29, when the three principal Palestinian militant groups unilaterally declared a three-month moratorium on attacks against Israelis. The number of attacks since then and the scale of tonight's explosion cast serious doubt on the cease-fire -- which Israeli officials have derided as a ruse -- and left in question the future of a shaky, U.S.-backed peace plan called the "road map," which has been stalled for weeks.
Gideon Meir, a senior official in Israel's Foreign Ministry, said tonight that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had ordered a "freeze on all contacts with the Palestinians for the time being and a freeze on all planned gestures," including a proposal being readied this week to transfer security authority for the West Bank cities of Jericho and Qalqilyah to Palestinian security forces.
[The Israeli army announced early Wednesday a general closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an army spokeswoman said. "No Palestinian can enter Israel," she said, adding that security forces had imposed "a tight encirclement of the cities" in the West Bank.]
Two of the Palestinian groups that had agreed to the cease-fire -- the Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas -- asserted responsibility for tonight's attack, and both named the bomber as Raed Abdul Hamid Misk, 29, from the West Bank city of Hebron. Israeli police said his identification was found aboard the bus.
"Our feeling is we are back to where we were before: We have no partner on the Palestinian side who can fight terrorism and carry out the road map," a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Jonathan Peled, said at the scene of the bombing. For negotiations to resume, he said, the Palestinians have to "show us some terrorists behind bars, terrorist organizations dismantled and illegal weapons confiscated."
"It's not the end of the road map," he said, "but it's very clear only one side is working for peace."
[A senior Palestinian official said early Wednesday that after a series of high-level meetings between Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his top cabinet ministers and security advisers, the Palestinian Authority had "severed all contacts and dialogue with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and is holding them responsible for harming the national interests of the Palestinian people."
The official said "the Palestinian security apparatus has decided to take a set of measures against the groups" but he declined to elaborate.]
In Gaza City, Abbas condemned the attack as a "horrible act which does not serve the interest of the Palestinian people at all." He ordered Palestinian security officials to investigate the bombing and warned Israel that retaliation "would not be in the interest of the peace process."
Abbas was in Gaza to meet with senior leaders from various Palestinian factions -- including Hamas and Fatah, the political movement headed by the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat -- to persuade them to shore up and extend the fragile 51-day-old truce. Abbas has said the cease-fire is critical to maintaining a peaceful atmosphere for continuing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
In asserting responsibility for today's blast, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad said the attack was in retaliation for the Israeli army's killing of their leaders in Hebron -- Islamic Jihad's Mohammed Sidr, who was killed in a firefight with Israeli soldiers five days earlier, and Abdullah Kawasme of Hamas, who was killed by Israeli troops on June 21, eight days before the cease-fire was announced.
A statement by Hamas insisted that the group was committed to the cease-fire, "but every violation by our enemy will be responded to with painful retaliation."
In Gaza, Hamas political leader Ismail Abu Shanab told reporters that the bombing was a reaction to "the continuing Israeli violations of the truce. We have declared the truce, but Israel has continued the killings and arrests."
Tonight's attack occurred across from the Synagogue of the Jews of the Caucasus on Shmuel Hanavi Street in the Beit Israel neighborhood, just north of the Jerusalem's Old City. The bomber boarded a packed Egged No. 2 articulated bus, which many ultra-Orthodox Jews take home after prayers at the Old City's Western Wall. Police reportedly were investigating whether the bomber had disguised himself as an observant Jew.
The blast left a gaping hole in the roof of the bus and blew out the sides and windows. Rescue workers led disoriented survivors to ambulances packed with wide-eyed, bloody children. Bikur Holim Hospital reported receiving 29 injured people, including six children under age 4. At Hadassah Hospital, officials said they were treating 11 children, the youngest 1 month old.
August 23, 2003, The Economist (US), After the Jerusalem bomb; Israel and the Palestinians,
A bus returning from prayer
The ceasefire, already broken, is now in tatters. Yet the Palestinian Authority has promised to take action against Islamic militants
BACK to war. On August 21st, an Israeli helicopter attack on Gaza city killed Ismail abu Shanab, a senior Hamas leader. Hamas vowed revenge, announcing itself released from the so-called ceasefire.
The Israeli army's attack, on West Bank cities as well as on Gaza, was in reprisal for a gruesome suicide bombing in Jerusalem that, two days earlier, had killed 20 passengers on a crowded bus. Ministers said there would be sustained military action aimed chiefly at Hamas, unless the Palestinians themselves moved against the Islamist organisations. The Palestinian Authority (PA), under intense pressure from America, announced a series of stern measures against Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The bomber, a 29-year-old imam in a Hebron mosque, married with a family of his own, chose a double-compartment bus crammed with Orthodox families returning from prayers at the Western Wall. The carnage was horrendous, with infants among the dead and wounded. It was by far the bloodiest attack since the shaky ceasefire took effect in early July.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Hebron vied to claim responsibility. They said it was a response to the killing by Israel last week of the Islamic Jihad commander in the city, Muhammad Sidr. The Israelis claim they intended only to arrest Mr Sidr. From now on, however, the policy of "targeted killings" is clearly being pursued.
In Gaza, prominent militants quickly went underground, fearing both Israeli rockets and the security forces of Muhammad Dahlan, the PA's minister of defence. The PA must take action now, the American State Department declared on August 20th, "to dismantle the capabilities of the terrorist groups". Colin Powell, the secretary of state, made the point forcefully in phone calls to the prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas. If you act, he promised, the Israelis will hold off.
Moderate Israeli ministers delivered the same message. "It's now or never for Mr Abbas," said the minister of justice and Shinui Party leader, Yosif Lapid. Hardliners scoffed at any such expectation. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the National Union and minister of transport, suggested bombing Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah "with everyone in it".
Its mind thus concentrated, the Palestinian cabinet resolved to arrest Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives, to shut down their newspapers and to assert tight control over their mosques, schools and welfare agencies. On the night of August 21st, Mr Abbas and his ministers presented their proposals to Mr Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organisation executive in Ramallah. The prime minister threatened to resign unless he was given full control over the PA's security apparatus. The executive solemnly resolved that all Palestinians must obey the PA. Illegal weapons would be rounded up. Armed demonstrations would not be allowed. Outside, there was the rumble of Israeli tanks.
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