Tentative hopes of reviving the Middle East peace process were jolted on Friday night when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a seafront karaoke nightclub in Tel Aviv, killing at least three people and wounding dozens.
An air of palpable shock hung heavy over Israel’s second city after the first suicide bombing in Israel for almost four months — and the first since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas succeeded Yasser Arafat earlier this year.
Abbas swiftly vowed to round up and punish the perpetrators, damning the attack as an effort to sabotage the ceasefire deal he concluded barely two weeks ago with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
But the attack met with dismay, resignation and impatience on the Israeli side, while the United States insisted that the Palestinians take action.
”It is essential that Palestinian leaders take immediate, credible steps to find those responsible for this terrorist attack and bring them to justice,” said Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State.
The suicide bomber struck just as the city’s youth were descending on seafront clubs and bars, targeting a queue of dozens of young people waiting outside the Stage nightclub, a popular beachfront venue in a neighbourhood packed with bars, ice-cream stalls, nightspots and embassies.
Parked cars were wrecked and spattered with flesh, and pavements were bloodied. The front of the nightclub was ripped off and other buildings scarred as shrapnel from the explosion tore through the busy Tel Aviv night.
”The bomb went off. I felt the earth move and then everyone was screaming ‘pigua‘ [the Hebrew word for terrorist attack],” said Sachi Elman (20), who was standing 10m from the club at the time. ”I looked around and I saw people coming towards me with blood coming from their heads and their mouths.”
Dozens of ambulances took about 50 wounded to hospital, and helicopters buzzed overhead, as Israelis tried to come to terms with the abrupt end of weeks of calm.
”It has been such a long time since anything like this has happened. It’s a complete shock,” said Shaha Ophir (30), who arrived at the nightclub just moments after the explosion.
He had planned to meet a group of friends from his reserve army unit, and was later frantically searching hospitals for them.
”We were on our way to a birthday party and just could not imagine that such a thing could happen again in the middle of Tel Aviv.”
Initial suspicion fell on the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, after a spokesperson claimed responsibility. But another leader of the organisation denied the claim, and other Palestinians militants and officials later pointed the finger at the Lebanese Hezbollah group. It denied involvement.
The political response was immediate. Abbas convened an emergency meeting with security chiefs, including Interior Minister Nasser Yousef and Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan. He also called for a joint Israel-Palestinian investigation into the bombing.
”What happened tonight was an act of sabotage toward the peace process and an attempt to ruin the efforts to establish a state of calm,” he said.
But Israeli officials said the attack demonstrated the need for the Palestinians to deal definitively with terrorist groups.
”We will have to see where we can tighten the screws and the Palestinian Authority has to tighten its screws,” Israeli Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra told reporters.
Zvi Heifetz, Israeli ambassador to London, said in a statement: ”What we feared most has happened: the terrorists have murdered civilians in order to destroy any chance for peace. No progress can be made without dismantling these organisations.”
Palestinian militant groups are observing a de facto truce, but have refused to sign up to the Abbas-Sharon deal until Israel offers great incentives such as mass prisoner releases and sweeping withdrawal from the occupied territories.
The last deadly suicide bombing inside Israel was on November 1, also in Tel Aviv.
Friday night’s events in Tel Aviv set a sombre backdrop to next week’s conference in London on building Palestinian statehood, to be hosted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and attended by Rice.
Pushing through security and political reforms are set to dominate the agenda. But any reforms that may eventuate will come too late for the handful of young men and women on hospital trolleys at the Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv.
Hospital deputy director Avi Hasner said 17 casualties had arrived, along with three dead and three seriously injured.
”The injured and the victims are mostly in their twenties,” Hasner said.
Surgeon Pinkhas Halpern, director of the hospital’s emergency room, said the attack was uncannily similar to an attack in Tel Aviv three years ago in which 21 people were killed.
”It’s eerie. It is so similar to the bomb at the Dolphinarium, almost exactly three years ago. It happened about the same time, the victims are a similar age and the site of the bombing was only 400m away.” — Guardian Unlimited Â