/ 1 January 2002

‘People flew in the air, on fire’

Nael Azmi Abu Hilail had more than enough time to see those he was about to kill after he boarded the number 20 bus at the bottom of Mexico Street.

The young Palestinian man cannot have failed to notice the two dozen or more children clutching their school books as he squeezed his way to the centre of the packed bus winding through the rush-hour traffic to the centre of Jerusalem yesterday morning.

But that did not discourage him.

Two stops later he detonated the explosive packed around his body, the first suicide bombing in Jerusalem in more than three months and a stunning blow to the peace camp in Israel’s general election campaign.

Eight passengers were killed instantly. By the end of the day the death toll had risen to 11. About half were children.

The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, ordered the army to launch a ”wide and extensive operation” in response to the bombing. He was not specific but, given that the bomber was from a village on the outskirts of Bethlehem, it seemed likely that the army would be ordered back into the city three months after it pulled out as a first step towards restoring Palestinian authority over West Bank towns. Within hours of the attack, the military had arrested the bomber’s father and brother.

Among those who escaped with wounds was Tamar Ravivo, who was sitting at the back of the bus. ”I never believed that this would happen in my neighbourhood,” she said. ”So I wasn’t looking and just read my book of Psalms. Suddenly there was such an explosion … and people flew in the air, on fire.”

The victims included 13-year-old Hodaya Asraf, who had followed her killer on to the bus. Hodaya was buried eight hours later. Others who died included a mother and her 16-year-old son and an elderly woman and her eight-year-old grandson. A large proportion of the 50 or more wounded were also children.

The explosion tossed schoolbags and textbooks on to the road, and scattered shards of glass for hundreds of metres. Frantic mothers ran to the scene desperate to know if their children were all right. The police were not letting the distraught women near the bodies, so they started phoning hospitals in search of answers. But in the chaos of the moment there were none.

Two young girls stood weeping, hand in hand, on a grass slope overlooking the bus.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack and promised worse to come.

”We confirm the path of jihad and martyrdom is continuing in every part of our occupied land as long as there is occupation and there are crimes. What is coming is bigger and, God willing, greater,” said Hamas’s armed wing in a statement.

The bombing is the first during the campaign for Israel’s general election in January and its political significance was quickly made clear. Security is the only issue that matters to most voters, and Sharon is campaigning on the back of his crackdown in the Palestinian territories and his refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat.

Despite Hamas’s admission of responsibility, the Israeli government directed its fire at Arafat.

”Undoubtedly [Arafat] is the one who is responsible,” said Uzi Landau, one of Sharon’s cabinet. ”We see the Europeans are now pressing for the swift establishment of a Palestinian state. How can we allow that? That would simply be used as a base for more attacks.

”This is a world war. It’s no different from what happened in Bali and at the theatre in Moscow. It all has its roots in radical Islam.”

The company that owned the bus reinforced the point by filing a lawsuit against Arafat and the Palestinian Authority a few hours after yesterday’s bombing, claiming £6,7-million in damages for the attacks on its vehicles over the past two years of the intifada.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the bombing as ”terrorism” and said it had nothing to do with ”resistance to occupation”. But it did say that Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories and its brutal military crackdown in the West Bank and Gaza, which has left several Palestinian children dead over the past week, kept the suicide bombers coming.

Arafat’s Fatah movement spent last week in Cairo trying to persuade militant Hamas leaders that suicide bombings united Israelis behind Sharon’s militarist tactics.

But independent Palestinian leaders, such as Mustafa Barghouti, argue that neither Hamas nor the Israeli right are interested in peace. ”Hamas has the same interest as Sharon — they don’t want an agreement, they don’t want to see progress, they feed off each other,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001