A Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and an Israeli policeman on Wednesday at a bus stop in the northern Arab town of Umm el-Fahm, in the first kamikaze attack inside Israel in six weeks, police said.
The bomber detonated the device as police approached him, killing himself on the spot, public radio said.
A policeman also died in the blast and another two Israelis were wounded, a policeman and a civilian whose condition was serious, said a police representative.
A witness said on army radio that the bomber was blown to pieces in the blast near a police van.
”We were sitting in a restaurant and suddenly heard a huge explosion. Another boy was hurt; the body of the man was completely destroyed. We were about 20 metres from the blast,” said the Arab Israeli witness.
The police representative said the bomber was apparently trying to board a bus heading further into Israel from Umm el-Fahm, which lies only 10 kilometres from the West Bank town of Jenin.
Israeli security forces had been on high alert throughout the day, after warnings that a suicide bomber was trying to cross the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank.
Government representative Avi Pazner laid the blame on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s administration for its failure to crack down on extremists, although the West Bank is almost entirely occupied by the Israeli army.
”This is the result of the complete inaction of the Palestinian Authority which is doing absolutely nothing to stop terrorist organisations sending their men to blow themselves up in Israel,” he said.
Pazner said the blast justified Israel’s continued reoccupation of the West Bank which had ”allowed us to stop the number of attacks being bigger.”
It was the first time since August 4 that a suicide bomber has blown himself up inside Israel, although several have been caught trying to enter the Jewish state.
The last kamikaze attack was at Meron Junction, also in the north, when a suicide bomber from the Islamic militant group Hamas killed seven Israelis and two Filipinos when his explosives ripped apart a bus.
Since then, Israel has enjoyed a period of calm almost unprecedented in two years of conflict with the Palestinians.
Israel has remained on high alert despite the calm, while violence has continued in the Palestinian territories, where two Israelis and two Palestinians were killed earlier on Wednesday.
The two Israelis were killed in separate attacks in the West Bank, while a Palestinian militant was shot dead in an army raid. A Palestinian suspected of collaborating was also found dead in a village near the West Bank town of Jenin.
The latest deaths brought the toll from two years of Palestinian uprising to 2 501 people, including 1 844 Palestinians and 607 Israelis, the remainder being foreign nationals.
In other news, Israel turned down a Palestinian offer halt attacks on civilians as the first stage of a gradual truce, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Wednesday he would settle for nothing less than a ”total cessation” of violence.
The dispute over the terms of a truce came as Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath met on Tuesday with senior Middle East mediators, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
The so-called Quartet of mediators – consisting of senior officials from the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia -expressed support for a general roadmap to Palestinian statehood within three years, but did not agree on a detailed plan, as the Palestinians had hoped.
The plan has three phases: Palestinian reform and elections, followed by the establishment of a provisional Palestinian state in some of the West Bank and Gaza in 2003, and a final peace agreement by 2005.
The Quartet said progress from one phase to the next would be based on the parties’ compliance, to be judged by the mediators. The Quartet did not provide a more detailed timetable. Arafat said he hoped there would be an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian areas so reforms can be implemented.
Shaath said he was disappointed with the outcome of the long-awaited meeting. ”We believe that what was adopted by the Quartet is not capable of getting us out of this crisis,” Shaath said.
Speaking at the start of a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Sharon said that no progress could be made without ”total cessation of violence and terror.”
Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin said Israel supports the Quartet’s outline as a more detailed version of US President George Bush’s vision of Middle East peace. ”We accept the map as long as it all comes after a cessation of violence,” Gissin said. ”This obligates the Palestinians and that’s why Shaath is opposed.”
During the meeting with the Quartet, Shaath proposed a gradual truce to Peres. The Palestinian Authority ”will be ready to encourage all Palestinians to stop targeting Israeli civilians,” he said, adding that he also sought an Israeli promise to stop killing suspected Palestinian militants and destroying houses.
”If Israel will do that, then this will pave a way for a comprehensive cease-fire, but unfortunately Mr Peres said that he rejects it,” he said.
Palestinians refer to civilians as those living in Israel, but consider Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza – land the Palestinians claim for a future state – to be combatants.
Peres told Shaath that the proposal ”would not be helpful because it would mean in the first phase it is permissible to kill other people,” an Israeli statement said.
Since Israel mounted its second large-scale incursion in the West Bank this year, sending troops to take control of main Palestinian cities and towns in mid-June after twin suicide bombings in Jerusalem, there has been a significant reduction in Palestinian attacks.
Arafat and other leaders, as well as his Fatah movement, have spoken out against suicide bombings and called for a halt to attacks inside Israel, but the radical groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have rejected the calls. – Sapa-AFP, Sapa-AP