The latest Palestinian suicide bombing threatened on Tuesday to reignite the cycle of violence in the Middle East as Israel mulled its response to the attack which left at least 14 people dead and blew a hole in US hopes to revive the peace process.
In northern Israel on Monday a jeep loaded with explosives and petrol cans blew up alongside a bus at Karkur junction just outside the town of Pardes Hanna, between Tel Aviv and Haifa. A police representative said at least 14 people had been killed, while Israeli television said some 50 wounded included a two-year-old girl, listed in serious condition.
The radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the blast, which came amid tentative new moves towards peace. However a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promptly blamed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, ”by direct commission or omission” for the atrocity. The explosion came as progress was reported on a ”roadmap” for a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being drawn up by an international quartet of Washington, Moscow, the European Union and United Nations.
But Zalman Shoval, Sharon’s foreign policy advisor, said: ”Before we can embark on any roadmap, there must be an absolute end to terror and violence, and this is contingent on a change in the Palestinian leadership”
Previous Palestinian suicide attacks have prompted Israel to launch retaliatory strikes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The European Union, the US and others urged restraint this time, fearing a re-escalation of violence in the region after 10 days of relative calm.
”Difficult as it might seem at times such as these, what Israelis and Palestinians need more than ever is less blood, and more commitment to re-establish a fruitful cooperation that should lead to dialogue and peace,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.
The White House, which has also called for Arafat to be dumped as Palestinian leader, condemned the attack and underlined the US commitment to the Middle East peace process. ”The administration condemns the most recent attack in Israel. Peace must be pursued and the violence must be stopped,” White House representative Ari Fleischer told reporters.
US envoy William Burns, on an extended tour of the Middle East, said in Riyadh that he had come to stress the US president’s commitment to the two-state vision to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Burns arrived in Saudi Arabia from Jordan Sunday as part of a regional tour aimed at making ”concrete” progress in ending the conflict, which has claimed more than 2 500 lives and has complicated US aims to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The roadmap aims to secure an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel by 2005.
His 12-stop tour has already included talks in Egypt with President Hosni Mubarak, and he is due to also travel to Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
For his part, Arafat moved swiftly to denounce the deadly bus bombing, insisting he was against ”the killing of civilians on both sides.”
”I reject this operation completely. The Palestinian leadership is against the killing of civilians on both sides,” Arafat said in a statement from the West Bank town of Ramallah. Separately, the Palestinian Authority called ”immediately for resuming without conditions the peace process as this is the only way to break the circle of violence and bloodshed.”
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday he was ”appalled” by the car bomb attack. In a statement, Annan, who was on a trip to Asia, said he ”once again calls on all Palestinian groups to stop immediately all such acts of violence.” On November 29 last year, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed three Israelis when he blew himself up on a bus in the same location.
The last fatal Palestinian attack in Israel occurred on October 10, when a suicide bomber killed one woman as he blew himself up after being thwarted from boarding a bus full of soldiers in eastern Tel Aviv. – Sapa-AFP