Blast brings death, devastation to central Jerusalem August 9, 2001 Posted: 9:56 AM EDT (1356 GMT)

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- At least 19 people were killed, including five or six infants, and scores injured in an explosion at a busy pizzeria in central Jerusalem on Thursday, medical and police sources said.

The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the explosion in a suicide bomb attack, which authorities said injured 70 people, many severely.

"The Jerusalem Brigades -- the military wing of Islamic Jihad of Palestine -- declares its responsibility for the heroic martyrdom operation in Jerusalem today at about 12:00 noon. The operation was carried out by Hussein Omar Abu Naaseh, 23," a statement faxed to Reuters news agency in Beirut said.

Israeli and Palestinian officials each blamed the other for the attack, which injured more than 70 people -- at least 13 seriously -- and for the continuation of violence that has unsettled the area for the past 11 months.

"We see (Palestinian Authority President Yasser) Arafat and the Palestinian Authority responsible for this terrible attack in Jerusalem today," Israeli Cabinet minister Danny Naveh told CNN. "Arafat is the one that gave the green light to Islamic Jihad to commit such bombings. He has released from jail terrorists with blood on their hands."

Naveh said that Israel would respond to the blast, as they have in the past when attacks have struck at Israeli civilians.

"Our only target is to prevent further terrible attacks," he said. "We will do whatever we can in order to stop terrorists from coming into our towns."

The Palestinians, however, blamed Israel for the continuation of violence in the region, saying their policies provoke the Palestinians, and that Palestinian officials cannot control the violence.

"It seems to me as usual they are looking at the wrong address," said Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashwari. "They should look closer at home. I don't think the (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon policy of attempting to besiege a whole people ... is a policy of utmost responsibility."

Palestinians say that Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza -- and the policy of "targeted killings" of Palestinians that the Israelis identify as militants -- has fragmented Palestinian territories, making it impossible for them to maintain security.

"You cannot bomb a whole people into submission," Ashwari said. "There has to be a level-headed approach to the causes of the violence, and the causes can be traced straight back to the occupation."

'Absolute shambles' Thursday's blast rocked the Sbarro restaurant -- at the intersection of King Georges Street and the Jaffa Road, a major artery going into central Jerusalem -- during the busy lunch hour.

The scene outside Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem on Thursday after a lunch-hour explosion Television pictures from the scene showed a scene of devastation, panic and chaos. A woman covered with blood held a cloth to her face as she stood in front of the restaurant. Other injured people lay bleeding on the street; others were led away screaming as the severely injured were being loaded into the back of ambulances and carried on stretchers.

In the aftermath of the explosion, ambulances, fire engines and police vehicles converged on the area around the pizzeria, cordoning off the streets.

The inside of the restaurant was destroyed, with broken plaster, fixtures, and furniture.

"All the windows have been blown out, absolute shambles inside this restaurant," CNN's Jerrold Kessel said from the scene.

That bombing led to a cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinians, which went into effect on June 13. But violence in the West Bank and Gaza has continued virtually unabated regardless of the ceasefire.

-- CNN Jerusalem Bureau Chief Mike Hanna contributed to this report.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001

Answers

More attacks threatened

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001

BBC Thursday, 9 August, 2001, 21:47 GMT 22:47 UK Israel stunned by Jerusalem blast

Police and medics reached the scene quickly

A suicide bomb attack at a pizza parlour in the heart of Jerusalem has killed at least 15 people - including a number of children - and injured more than 90.

It was the most deadly bomb attack since a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 20 Israelis in Tel Aviv on 1 June - and the worst by far in Jerusalem during the ongoing 10-month Palestinian uprising.

BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy says the attack will strengthen the hand of Mr Sharon against doves in his cabinet who have been pushing for more political dialogue with Palestinian leaders.

A senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon blamed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the bombing.

Dore Gold said Mr Arafat bore responsibility for the attack because he had not put an end to incitement to violence against Israelis.

"Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are directly responsible for the deaths," he told the BBC.

Mr Arafat condemned the attack and called for a joint ceasefire.

Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Mr Sharon, refused to reveal how the government planned to react to the attack, but said that "Israel is definitely going to respond."

The sentiments were echoed by Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert.

"We are in a war... We will act together with the government to reach every one of those who is responsible for terror, to hit them and kill them," he said.

In a strongly worded statement, US President George W Bush called on Mr Arafat to "act now to arrest and bring to justice those responsible, and take immediate, sustained action to prevent future terrorist attacks".

Competing claims

Hamas, the hard-line Palestinian militant group, said one of its members had been the bomber.

Islamic Jihad, which had also claimed responsibility, later said it had mistakenly thought that one of its activists was behind the blast.

"Our fighter Hussein Abu Amsha was en route to carry out a martyrdom operation and when the explosion happened, our brothers thought it was him," Islamic Jihad General Secretary Ramadan Shallah said in Damascus.

Palestinian legislative council member Hanan Ashrawi said the pizza parlour attack was part of a cycle of violence.

Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo went farther: "Sharon provoked it. Sharon waited for it. Sharon wanted it," he said.

The nail-packed bomb exploded in what Mayor Olmert called one of the busiest intersections in Jewish west Jerusalem at the busiest part of the day.

Shattered glass covered the ground around the Sbarro restaurant in the busy Jaffa Street shopping district.

Dozens of ambulances, sirens blaring, rushed to the scene. Many of the casualties were children.

A doctor at nearby Shaare Zedek hospital said he had three critically injured patients between the ages of four months and a year and a half.

Dozens killed

Palestinian suicide bombers have killed dozens of Israelis since the uprising began after peace talks became deadlocked.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have claimed responsibility for most of the bombings.

Jerusalem shop-owner Nava Perry saw the aftermath of the blast: "We saw bodies thrown all over the floor and people ran into my store dripping with blood.

"I saw bodies inside the restaurant and the body of a little girl on the street outside full of blood.

"Bodies were all over inside and outside. Sbarro is completely blown up."

The attack came amid high tensions between the Palestinians and Israelis, with Palestinian militants vowing revenge for Israel's policy of killing activists they consider a threat to Israeli security.

"I believe this (bombing) was the retaliation of the Palestinian people for the terrorist Zionists attacks," said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a senior Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip.

"They must understand that the blood of our people is not cheap."

A Palestinian official has warned that growing support among Palestinians for radical Islamist groups is making it harder for the Palestinian Authority to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In a separate incident on Thursday, an Israeli soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper near the West Bank town of Tulkarm.

Palestinian television reported that Israeli tanks began shelling a Palestinian village in the south of the Gaza Strip shortly after the attack.

Later, a 19-year-old Israeli woman died near an Israeli farming community near the West Bank after coming under fire from Palestinian gunmen.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001

Jerusalem Post

(20:15) Cabinet minister: This time we will respond

Health Minister Nissim Dahan this evening called for a severe retaliation to the suicide bombing in Jerusalem.

"What we wanted to do [after the suicide bombing] at the Dolphinarium, and we pushed it off because of requests and that the whole world had mercy on the lives of the Palestinians... and [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat said... I'll take care of everything, give me a chance," Dahan said.

"We gave him the chance, and this is what he has shown, what he knows how to do – more terrorist attacks and more victims and more bloodletting. This time we will not let it go [unanswered]."

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001

Jewish World Rev

WOMEN WARRIORS

By Douglas Davis

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- AN ALERT security guard at Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station averted a major human tragedy last Friday afternoon when he spotted a 23-year-old Palestinian woman, Imman Ghazawi, carrying a large package. Challenged, the woman attempted to flee, abandoning the package in her haste.

When it was opened, the guard's suspicions were found to have been well-placed: the package contained no less than 13 pounds of explosives and a quantity of nails that would have been transformed into a cluster of lethal darts if the explosives had been detonated on the station's busy concourse.

Foiling such terrorist acts has, sadly, become the stuff of everyday life in Israel. What makes this episode so unusual is that the would-be perpetrator of indiscriminate mass-slaughter was a woman.

Islamic clergy have debated for months whether women should be used for such operations against Israelis. The answer came just two days before mother-of-two Ghazawi set out on her mission when the High Islamic Council in Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa [religious decree] exhorting women to become suicide bombers.

Since then, scores of Palestinian women are reported to have volunteered for "martyrdom" and Israeli security sources believe that many more will seek to translate their ferocious religious zealotry into what they perceive as heroic death.

This will significantly raise the stakes, say the sources, as Arab women are able to disguise explosives strapped to their bodies under their heavy, long, shapeless garments far more effectively than men, who raise instant suspicion if they wear more than a light cotton shirt in Israel's sweltering summer heat.

"It will leave us with an almost impossible task in trying to prevent atrocities," said one source.

But according to Palestinian spiritual leader Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, the arrival of women on the battlefield is perfectly justifiable: "Israel has issued a death warrant against the Palestinians," he says, "and now the women will also fight. The Palestinians prefer to be killed at the front rather than wait and be killed at home."

He described how Palestinian women wear white shrouds at funerals -- a sign they are ready to die as "martyrs" -- and how they implore their male counterparts to "make a bomb of me."

"Israel has the Dimona nuclear plant, but we Palestinians have a stronger Dimona - the suiciders," said Sheikh Darwish. "We can use them on a daily basis."

Palestinian women, however, are not being perceived solely as suicide bombers: more benign Arab intellectuals are increasingly calling on them to become "biological bombs" -- in order defeat Israel by outbreeding them in the maternity wards.

They point to a report on population projections recently presented to the Knesset [parliament] which shows that Arabs will outnumber Jews within the pre-1967 "Green Line" within 35 years and that there are already as many Arabs as Jews when the West Bank and Gaza Strip are included.

And noting that the Palestinian birth rate is far outpacing that of the Jewish population, they see the best hopes of a Palestinian victory against Israel through demography rather than violence.

Writing in the London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat last weekend, Egyptian intellectual Dr Wahid al-Magid noted that "the way to end the Arab-Israel conflict is through changing the demographic balance within the Green Line.

"It will not be long before the Arabs become the supreme decision-makers who control the conflict," he wrote.

This is not this just wishful thinking. Israel's leading demographer, Haifa University's Professor Arnon Sofer, agrees that the trend in Arab birth-rates poses what he describes as "a threat to Israel's existence," pointing out that 50 percent of the Arab population is under the age of 15 and that the Arab population will double every 17 years.

Nor is the high birth rate within the Arab community the only source of population increase: In recent years, some 100,000 Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians have illegally settled in the predominantly Arab areas of Israel.

This did not escape the attention of Dr al-Magid, who noted that "the demographic weapon does not derive only from the high birth rate," and that the mass infiltration of Arabs into Israel "create facts on the ground."

Such pronouncements serve to demoralize still further the "peace camp" in Israel: "Finally we are seeing that even moderate Arabs do not want peace. They want Israel," noted veteran Peace Now activist Yael Cohen.

"The whole premise of the Oslo accords was land for peace, not a phased plan to destroy Israel. Now, after we have already withdrawn from most of the Palestinian-populated areas in the West Bank and Gaza, we realize we have been tricked."

Woman are rare, but not unknown, in the annals of Palestinian terrorism. Serial airline hijacker Leila Khaled, famously photographed with a clutch of hand- grenades and rifles in 1970, was, after all, one of the earliest and most potent emblems of Palestinian militancy.

But the prospect of Palestinian women suicide bombers, explosives strapped to their bodies under flowing galabiyas, has struck a chord of horror among those charged with keeping the streets of Israel safe.

-- Anonymous, August 09, 2001

My boss' son returned safely from Israel, about a day or two before the bombing. She had originally told me she wasn't TOO concerned because he was in a part of Israel that was relatively calm. But it turns out he was catching a bus outside the Sbarro on a daily basis, and had gone in there at least once.

He wants to go back next year, and join the army.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 2001

Brooks, suggest to your friend that if her son is still talking seriously about joining the Israeli Army to send him to CMU (Carnegie- Mellon) in Pittsburgh and let him talk to the Israelis who have come over here to study. An hour or two of listening to their horror stories should quash his desire to join the army.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 2001