Terror Network Cut, Israel Says : Mideast: Shin Bet security force declares it seized head of militant Islamic group’s bombing ring and 29 others. Hamas point man implicated in recent suicide bus attacks.

Shin Bet, Israel’s secret security force, said Wednesday that it smashed a network of the Hamas militant Islamic movement in the West Bank that it blamed for planning and carrying out Monday’s suicide bombing here and an earlier attack in Tel Aviv.

The Israelis said they had arrested the ring’s masterminds, apprehended more than two dozen others and seized an assortment of dangerous materiel.

“This cell represented the infrastructure of the military wing of Hamas in the West Bank,” Shin Bet’s chief told Israeli military reporters in a briefing.

Military censors do not allow Shin Bet’s director to be named, and it is highly unusual for the agency’s head to conduct a news conference.

But Shin Bet has been under increasing pressure as Israeli casualties mount from the string of suicide bombing attacks by Islamic militants since Israel signed its September, 1993, framework peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The security agency seemed eager to take credit Wednesday for uncovering the suspected Hamas cell, with its director describing in detail for reporters a complex network of relationships that he said are rooted in the Gaza Strip and the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Shin Bet’s big break came Saturday, when it arrested Abdel Nasser Issa, described as the bombing ring’s mastermind, he said.

Issa, 27, rented an apartment several weeks ago in the West Bank town of Nablus, near the Balata refugee camp, under an assumed name. He turned it into a bomb-making factory, Shin Bet said.

Israel Television on Wednesday night showed materiel that the agency said was used to make bombs and weapons, including automatic rifles, photographed in Issa’s apartment.

Shin Bet’s chief said the agency also uncovered a car rigged with a bomb; disguises that included wigs and Jewish skullcaps, and documents indicating that the ring hoped to kidnap an Israeli soldier.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Wednesday told Labor Party Cabinet ministers that Shin Bet could have prevented Monday’s fatal bombing in Jerusalem, had it received permission Saturday from legal advisers to employ greater “physical pressure” on Issa during interrogation.

Shin Bet’s chief confirmed that advisers gave permission to use such methods--known to include shaking that has resulted in the death during interrogation of one Palestinian--only after a bomber blew up himself and four other people on a bus in northern Jerusalem on Monday.

Shin Bet on Saturday also apprehended a second man, Hatem Ismail, described as Issa’s primary accomplice. The two men reportedly told Shin Bet that they were trained in Gaza by Yehiya Ayyash. He is known as “The Engineer” and is said to be a master bomb maker whom the Israelis have been hunting for two years.

Issa and Ismail moved to the West Bank six months ago, using forged identity papers to pass through army checkpoints, and began recruiting suicide bombers, according to Shin Bet.

On July 24, Issa is suspected of driving Labib Anwar Azzam, 22, from Qarawat Bani Zeid, a village near Nablus, to the Israeli town of B’nei Brak near Tel Aviv. Carrying explosives that Issa allegedly prepared, Azzam boarded a bus and detonated the device in the Ramat Gan suburb during the morning rush hour. Six Israelis were killed in the Ramat Gan attack.

Issa also is suspected of recruiting Sufian Sbeh, 26, of Dhariyeh village near Hebron, for the suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Monday. Shin Bet said Wednesday that Issa prepared the explosives for the attack but passed them to another man who is still at large; that individual gave them to Sbeh.

Shin Bet said it discovered videotaped farewells by both Sbeh and Azzam in Issa’s apartment.

But members of Sbeh’s family insisted Wednesday, when reporters descended on their home, that he is alive and had visited the family Tuesday for lunch. His family said Sbeh, who they said is a member of Hamas, is seeking work in the northern part of the West Bank.

Among those killed in the Jerusalem bombing was Joan Davenny, 47, a teacher from Woodbridge, Conn. She was buried Wednesday in Jerusalem in a funeral attended by hundreds of friends and relatives and Martin Indyk, U.S. ambassador to Israel.

With information they obtained from Issa and Ismail, Shin Bet reportedly arrested 28 other men suspected of belonging to the ring. But Ayyash remains on the run, and Shin Bet believes he is in Gaza, now controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli opposition Likud Party issued a statement Wednesday saying the latest arrests demonstrate that the authority is not doing enough to quell terror.

Shin Bet’s director said Issa and Ismail also revealed that Ayyash’s spiritual mentor--Sheik Izzadine Khalil, who was deported by Israel to Lebanon in 1992--is now operating from Damascus.

Peace talks between Israel and Syria have been stalled for months, and Israel has repeatedly complained that the Syrians let members of Palestinian rejectionist groups, bent on destroying the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, operate from their territory.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators continued to work Wednesday in the southern Israeli seaport of Eilat on an accord that will extend Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank.

U.S. peace envoy Dennis Ross joined the negotiations Tuesday night, in what American diplomats said was an effort to reach a pact quickly. A senior U.S. diplomat said the Clinton Administration is eager to see a signing ceremony between Israel and the Palestinians on the White House lawn Sept. 7.

Some members of Rabin’s own Labor Party have argued that the mood in Israel is so somber, as a result of the bombings, that it would be unseemly to celebrate in Washington the completion of a West Bank agreement.