United States President George W Bush’s attempt to push the Middle East crisis back on to a peace track appeared to have been derailed on Wednesday night as Jerusalem was shaken by a second suicide bombing in two days and Israeli helicopter gunships launched immediate strikes on Palestinian refugee camps in retaliation.
In the wake of the back-to-back bombings, Bush postponed plans for a major foreign policy speech, which had been expected to back a timetable and conditions for Palestinian statehood.
The postponement, and cancellation of a visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, appeared to indicate that peace efforts were unravelling.
Wednesday’s onslaught on the streets of Jerusalem left seven people, including a two-year-old, dead and 37 injured.
The bomber ran from a car and detonated his explosives at a busy bus stop in the French Hill area of north Jerusalem. The attack followed a bus bombing on Tuesday that killed 19.
Israel responded to Wednesday’s attack about three hours later with helicopters firing rockets at metal workshops in the Gaza Strip. Thirteen Palestinians were hurt, two seriously, Palestinian doctors said.
Late on Wednesday night, an Israeli armoured column entered Ramallah and was reported to be heading for the centre of the West Bank town.
Wednesday’s bombing is certain to heighten calls in Israel for the expulsion of Yasser Arafat as it was claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to the Palestinian Authority leader’s Fatah faction.
Hours before the second attack the Israeli Cabinet announced a new policy of gradual but permanent occupation of cities in the West Bank, ”capturing the territories of the Palestinian Authority”. It had already begun to transport mobile houses for military use.
An Israeli government spokesperson said: ”We will take whatever action necessary in order to continue to protect the citizens of Israel. We hold the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Yasser Arafat, responsible for all this.”
Arafat appealed to Palestinians to halt bombings against civilians in a speech released on Thursday.
Arafat’s Minister of Labour, Ghassan Khatib, condemned the postponement of Bush’s announcement, saying it would ”reward the Israeli government, which slips out of peace commitments and also awards opponents of peace on the Palestinian side”.
To keep the prospect of talks alive, the Palestinian Authority submitted a document to the US State Department, in which it said it was willing to negotiate over the right of return of refugees, one of the key sticking points in past negotiations with Israel.
A two-page document presented to Powell also scaled down the request for a formal army in any future state to a demand for ”limited arms”.
Israel has been opposed to the return of refugees who left what became Israel in 1948 and their descendants, arguing that it would effectively make Israel a Palestinian state.
But US officials said a presidential announcement at this stage would be unlikely to have a positive impact. ”It’s obvious that the immediate aftermath is not the right time,” the White House spokesperson, Ari Fleischer, said.
”The president wants to give a speech at a time when it will have the maximum impact to bring the maximum prospects for peace to the region and the president will make that determination about what that time is.”
Earlier this week six bulldozers belonging to the Israeli contracting firm of Y Ze’evi rolled up to the army checkpoint at Salem junction, outside the West Bank city of Jenin, and began flattening an area of scrub.
When they are finished, Y Ze’evi’s labourers — mainly Israeli Arabs — will have flattened a stretch of land nearly 10km long and installed an electric fence along the length of it.
It will separate Jenin, whose refugee camp was devastated during the Israeli military incursions in April, from its Jewish neighbours.
The fence, which will run from Salem to the Palestinian town of Umm el-Fahm, will take two months to build. It will be the first section of a 110km fence that will separate Israeli towns to the west of the former ”green line” — the pre-1967 border between Israel and the then Jordanian-controlled West Bank — from the Israeli-occupied Palestinian areas. It will run from the northern tip of the West Bank to Megiddo.
Last week the Israeli Ministry of Defence confirmed that it had engaged a dozen contractors whom it expects will take up to 12 months to complete the fence. But that will be a precursor to a more ambitious barrier, 450km long, including 50km in the Jerusalem area.
Officially this barrier, which will incorporate obstacles and ditches, is to prevent Palestinian terrorists attacking Israel. Unofficially, its opponents say, it will form a new political border along the green line.
Its Palestinian opponents say it will also continue Israel’s encroachment into the West Bank, 42% of whose land has already been effectively annexed by Israeli settlements.
The full scope of the project, expected to cost $402-million, was revealed last week to Knesset members by the Director General of the Ministry of Defence, Amos Yaron.
Building the fence will involve the seizure of mainly Palestinian land, and Palestinian villages and towns on the western side of the fence are worried that they will be unable to take their produce for sale on the West Bank. It will also make it almost impossible to cross by foot into Israel from the West Bank, something many workers do illegally every day.
On Thursday Arafat called on his people to stop attacks on Israeli civilians, saying the wave of bombings and shootings harmed Palestinian interests.
Arafat’s statement was released by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.