Bombs push Israel to brink

PHIL REEVES has seen other suicide bombings, but these 'horrific acts of murder' were different.

JERUSALEM - It may well go down as the day when the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians turned from a nasty, nagging guerrilla conflict into fully fledged war.

It brought three suicide bombings against Israel, two in the centre of west Jerusalem and one in the port city of Haifa, and a car bomb. In a separate attack, two Palestinians killed an Israeli at Elei Sinai, in the Gaza Strip, before Israeli troops shot them dead. And it all happened within 12 hours on Sunday.

This was the largest multiple assault launched by Palestinian militants inside Israel since the Intifada began. Yesterday, the death toll stood at 25, and the list of injured was nearly 200. The Middle East was bracing itself for Israel's response.

World leaders pressed Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to crack down on militants. The United States, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and others said Arafat must arrest those responsible and move against the organisations behind terrorism.

US President George W. Bush denounced the bombings as "horrific acts of murder".

The US did not make its usual calls for Israeli restraint. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "The only way to defend against terrorists is to go after terrorists."

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Palestinian authorities to immediately arrest "those responsible for these and earlier acts of terrorism".

Senior sources in the Israeli Government told the BBC yesterday that Arafat had 24 hours to arrest those suspected of being behind the killings and keep them in jail.

Arafat responded to the suicide attacks by declaring a state of emergency in the West Bank and Gaza and arresting 75 militants, including two top political leaders from the bombers, Hamas.

But as Israel's cabinet prepared for an emergency meeting today to decide steps to combat the attacks, it was not clear whether Arafat's crackdown would be enough to stop Israeli reprisals.

The world's TV screens were still full of the images of blood and misery caused by the attack on Jerusalem when appalling new images came pouring in - this time from Haifa, a place that used to boast of its good inter-ethnic relations.

By yesterday, 15 people - Israeli Arabs and Jews together - lay dead in Haifa, blown to bits on a municipal bus by a Hamas suicide bomber who stepped on board and handed over a large banknote as his fare. When the driver called him back to get his change, he blew himself up.

The Government announced that it would "be taking the fight into its own hands" - as if it has not already done so over the last year by invading Palestinian towns and killing hundreds of civilians.

A fresh internal debate began between Israel's left and right over whether Arafat should be toppled.

The beginning of the carnage was signalled by two big and almost simultaneous booms, an ugly cannonade that sounded across the Jerusalem sky.

For all its deeply conservative and religious tendencies, Jerusalem is a late-night city - at least, in the western Israeli half. After the end of the Jewish Sabbath, hundreds of young Israelis flood into the centre, drawn in by the cafes, pizza joints and restaurants of the Ben Yehuda St promenade for a few hours of relaxation before the start of the working week.

Saturday night (Sunday afternoon New Zealand time) was no different. When two young Hamas suicide bombers detonated themselves within 30m of each other, the place was teeming.

Jerusalem's Israeli residents have learned from experience how to react to bombs. They wait. They listen. They hope. If it is followed by a hush, they return to their business, relieved that another Palestinian mission to kill has failed.

If the boom is followed by the cacophony of ambulances and police cars, they know there are victims and immediately begin the painful search for news. This time the racket of sirens started almost at once and carried on for several hours.

Those who saw the first of the blasts described the ensuing horrors in language that has become sickeningly familiar.

They spoke of severed limbs, strewn around the pavement, of victims staggering around in confusion covered in blood. Some had nails and screws, which had been packed among the explosives, buried in their flesh.

Such attacks ruin lives suddenly and horribly, as does an Israeli tank shell, armed with thousands of steel darts, fired into the Gaza Strip.

This is the point when war becomes purely obscene, no matter what its origins or who bears the brunt of the blame.

Ben Furkoth, aged 21, saw a man take off his jumper, to find blood was pouring out of his back.

A woman called IIana claimed to have seen one of the young bombers before he blew himself to smithereens and - in the warped mythology of religious fanaticism turned to political ends - to paradise. She said he was dressed in a red shirt and jeans.

These were attacks whose calculated and callous nature can never be justified by the miseries suffered by the Palestinians in the 14-month Intifada or during more than three decades of illegal military occupation, or by their acute sense of having been denied their national rights, or of being betrayed by Western international diplomacy.

The first bombings were horrendous. But the huge car bomb that detonated 20 minutes after the first blasts revealed the murderous thinking behind the operation.

It cannot but have been deliberately intended to kill those who had been drawn to the scene - in other words, as many people as possible.

The vehicle, a white saloon car, was parked in a side street off the Jaffa Rd, just 50m from the scene of the suicide bombings.

A large crowd of rescue workers and onlookers had gathered nearby before it went off. People scattered in panic as it sent a fireball more than 10m into the air.

It failed in its attempt to kill - although it badly injured several people. But it certainly fulfilled its other purpose, which was to sow terror.

I arrived in the middle of west Jerusalem about 20 minutes after the mayhem began.

It felt different from other aftermath of other attacks that I have seen. People were running in all directions. A young woman was being comforted by friends as she wept uncontrollably.

In the streets leading away from the centre, hooting queues of traffic had built up as Israelis tried to get home, just in case there was another bomb.

There was a sense that west Jerusalem felt itself to be under an unpredictable and determined attack, a small whiff of New York, September 11.

Palestinian gunmen have set off in pairs on suicide missions in Israel's pre-1967 borders before in this Intifada.

But this was the Intifada's first simultaneous double suicide bombing.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

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