12-Week Lull in Mideast Ends

An Israeli military airstrike killed a Palestinian militant leader and four other people in Gaza City on Thursday, and less than an hour later, four Israelis were slain in a suicide bombing at a bus stop outside Tel Aviv -- back-to-back spasms of violence that shattered more than two months of relative quiet and dealt a fresh setback to peace efforts.

Officials said the Gaza missile strike by an Israeli helicopter killed Makled Hamid, leader of the military wing of the extremist group Islamic Jihad, which has carried out suicide bombings inside Israel. Hamid was riding in a car with two other militants, who also died in the surprise attack.

Two bystanders were reported killed as well, and at least two dozen others were injured, according to officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Less than an hour later, an explosion ripped through a bus stop at a busy crossroads in Bnei Brak, a Tel Aviv suburb, killing three Israeli soldiers, a 17-year-old Israeli girl and the bomber, who later was identified as an 18-year-old from Beit Furik in the northern West Bank. At least a dozen other passengers and bystanders were injured.

Police said the assailant approached the bus stop -- which sits at a junction that is a popular pickup point for Palestinians seeking work -- and then blew himself up in the street.

The blast shattered the windshields of passing cars as rush-hour motorists suddenly found themselves in the midst of tragedy. “I saw that around me were bits of body ... blood -- so much blood,” said motorist Dana Cohen, 28, who was treated for injuries at a nearby hospital.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist faction, claimed responsibility for the bombing, which was the first in Israel since an Oct. 4 attack at a restaurant in Haifa that left 21 people dead. The group, not normally known for bombings, said the attack was in retaliation for the deaths of two of its leaders in the West Bank city of Nablus during an Israeli military operation last week.

The 12-week break from terror bombings, following a spate of deadly explosions, had led some officials to conclude that one of the main militant groups, Hamas, had informally halted suicide attacks amid efforts to forge a cease-fire with Israel.

The lull also allowed Israeli and Palestinian activists a chance to build support for an unofficial peace proposal, even as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed taking unilateral steps to separate from the West Bank and Gaza Strip if the Palestinians did not end their three-year uprising.

Reflecting broad public fatigue over the continuing conflict, Israeli polls have shown support for evacuating Jewish settlements deep inside the occupied territories, as well as for Sharon’s plan to pull back to a still-undefined “security line” that probably would take in some settlements and land where Palestinians now live.

With the help of Egyptian mediators, Palestinian groups have sought to negotiate a cease-fire among themselves, so far without success.

But Israeli officials said Thursday that the calm had been deceptive. They said the Israeli military had foiled 39 would-be terror attacks -- 24 of them inside Israel -- since the Haifa bombing took place.

“This wasn’t a real calm. This wasn’t the Palestinians refraining from terrorist activity,” said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon.

The Palestinians say that the relative calm is deceiving because of continuing Israeli military actions that have resulted in the deaths of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The violence Thursday came after a week of escalating tensions over the deadly Israeli raids.

Passions have run high in Gaza following skirmishes Tuesday between militants and Israeli soldiers that left nine Palestinians dead and more than 40 other people wounded.

The Israelis said they encountered fierce resistance that day when they moved into the Rafah refugee camp in search of tunnels they believe are used for smuggling weapons from Egypt. Soldiers located one such tunnel and destroyed it.

The Rafah operation came hours after two Israeli soldiers were slain in the central Gaza Strip by a grenade-throwing Palestinian gunman.

In claiming responsibility for Thursday’s bombing, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine vowed new acts of vengeance for the Israeli raid in Nablus that killed two of its leaders.

Islamic Jihad, too, promised to retaliate for the Israeli airstrike against Hamid, who was described in a statement by the militant group as the general commander of its military wing, the Al Quds Brigade. The group said the attack “will not pass without punishment.”

Israeli officials said Hamid was behind more than a dozen terror attacks that killed at least six Israelis and wounded 19 others. Israeli security forces have been on his trail for a month and chose to strike now, officials said, because he was planning what Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz labeled “a mega attack” in the Gaza area.

Security officials said Hamid ordered an Oct. 24 attack that killed three Israeli soldiers who were guarding the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. Under Hamid’s leadership, Israeli authorities said, militants fired Kassam rockets into Israel, carried out shootings against soldiers and civilians and sent suicide bombers.

“It was necessary to take him out -- that’s all,” Gissin said.

Thursday’s airstrike was Israel’s first aerial attack against suspected militants since a controversial sortie in late October, when an Israeli gunship fired two missiles into a Gaza refugee camp, killing eight bystanders and wounding 70. The incident was an embarrassment for the military and prompted angry protests from Palestinians.

Israel and the Palestinians blamed each other Thursday for the latest violence. Both conceded that the already daunting barriers to a peaceful settlement had grown higher still.

Sharon remains committed to the U.S.-backed diplomatic initiative known as the “road map,” but also steadfast in his threat to sever Israel’s ties to the West Bank and Gaza unless there is progress at the peace table in coming months, Gissin said.

He said Thursday’s bombing “only reinforces the plan that the prime minister advanced” last week. Continued terrorism “will leave us with no choice but ... to decide whether to take the unilateral steps the prime minister spoke about,” Gissin said.

Mohammed Waheidi, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry, said Israel bore responsibility for the escalation by launching a series of recent raids, including the daylong operation in Rafah. Palestinian officials said the raid led to their postponing efforts to schedule a meeting between Sharon and his Palestinian Authority counterpart, Ahmed Korei.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the bus stop attack.

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Special correspondent Tami Zer in Bnei Brak contributed to this report.