One-Two Punch Puts Jerusalem in State of Shock

Reeling from the one-two punch of successive bus bombings, Jerusalemites lined up by the thousands to donate their blood for survivors of Sunday morning’s explosion--or, as they said bitterly, of next week’s blast.

Waiting to offer their arms, the usually tough residents of this contested capital looked confused and helpless, as if searching for ways to direct their anger and to stop the mayhem wrought by the extremists from the militant Islamic group Hamas.

“I came with my blood and my prayer book--that’s all that’s left to do,” Roni Lottner, a 29-year-old youth counselor, said at the Magen David medical center. “I have never felt so defenseless. They’re laughing at us. It’s not a matter of left or right, religious or not. It’s just a lousy time.”

From the War of Independence in 1948 to last year’s assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israelis have lived through a steady stream of violent crises and national traumas. Yet experience did nothing to lessen the pain of the latest bombings. Jerusalem was in shock.

In recent months, Palestinian elections and the redeployment of Israeli troops from West Bank cities gave a sense of momentum to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. With no bus bombings since an attack in northern Jerusalem in August, some Israelis had grown nervous over the quiet, but many others allowed themselves to hope for an end to violence.

Instead, they have gotten a nightmare of twisted metal and mangled bodies, a haunting routine of funerals and what the Education Ministry’s chief psychologist, Bernie Stein, calls “a sense that everything is falling apart.”

The depression and vulnerability are drawn on their faces. The famed Hamas bomb maker Yehiya Ayash was blown up in January in what most Israelis considered an ingenious undercover operation by the secret service, and they knew to expect an eye for an eye.

But they did not know that less than two months later, Ayash’s proteges would prove to be even more successful than he had been.

The “students” of Ayash have carried out two attacks in the heart of Jerusalem and one near the coastal town of Ashkelon. Israelis regularly watch for suspicious people on buses, but now they know that at least one of the bombers wore an Israeli army uniform and carried his explosives in an army knapsack.

Both Jerusalem attacks took place on the city’s main street, Jaffa Road, on the crowded No. 18 bus that traverses the capital. Both took place early on a Sunday morning, exactly a week apart. The first explosion was near the central bus station and killed more people--26--than any attack since Ayash began the bus bombing campaign two years ago; the second blast was outside the main post office and City Hall, about a block from the central Zion Square.

“They keep proving to us that they can do this any time they feel like it,” said Yael Kabilou, an 18-year-old high school student. “It’s psychological warfare. I know they’re trying to hurt the center of the nation and trying to shake our confidence.”

With the second bus bombing, the coping mechanisms that Jerusalemites have developed suddenly seemed useless. Lightning never strikes twice, they used to say. They never believed the same bus would be hit on the same street and at the same hour. But it was.

For Kabilou, donating blood seemed a kind of therapy, an effort to fight back. Her brother lost an army mate in last week’s bus bombing, and she was waiting to hear whom she might know on this one. Despite a Hamas communique claiming that the retaliation for Ayash’s death was complete, she could not help but think about when the next attack might be.

“You know, I feel like I’m just waiting for it to happen to me. I don’t want it to happen. On the other hand, I keep thinking I’m a part of the city and so it’s going to happen,” she said.

Almost every Israeli family in the capital either had a friend or relative on one of the buses or knows someone who did. A dentist lost a longtime patient; a neighbor lost a niece. The son of a popular journalist from Israel’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, was killed in last week’s attack: Nahum Barnea went to the scene of the Feb. 25 bombing unaware that his firstborn was among the dead.

The seven-day shiva, or official mourning period, for the victims of the first blast had just ended when another suicide bombing left 19 dead Sunday. For many Jerusalemites, sadness and frustration quickly turned to anger on the day that was to have been a festive celebration of the Jewish holiday Purim, when children dress in costume and exchange candies at school.

Residents telephoned their fears to city hotlines and radio stations, and they poured into the center of town to light candles, say prayers or demonstrate against a deadly peace. They felt that to return to their routine was wrong, yet they were uncertain exactly how to express their rage.

At the site of last week’s bombing, 18-year-old Moran Ofir struggled against a stubborn wind to light memorial candles.

“I wanted to buy candles for all of the victims, but there weren’t enough in the stores.”

Next to the site of the bombing, Isaac Cohaan locked the doors of his Dr. Shwarma falafel restaurant, saying, “People have no appetite on a day like today.” He shook his head at what he called “hooligans” protesting outside and said he feared they would begin taking the law into their own hands.

“I came here this morning and watched them moving the bodies. There were some children walking by in their Purim costumes who had not heard the news. I just stood here and cried,” Cohaan said. “Afterward, I went home, woke up my kids and gave them a good hug and kisses. We just hope for better days. And if there is a God, he should do something.”