Suicide Bombing Leaves 4 Dead at Tel Aviv Cafe

In a grotesque attack that Israelis had been anticipating for days, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded cafe here during celebrations of the Jewish holiday of Purim on Friday, killing three women and wounding 46 other people.

Waiters and wounded customers at the chic cafe, on a tree-lined residential street, said a man in his 20s entered the restaurant carrying one or two duffel bags and then sat down at an outdoor table. Minutes later, the restaurant exploded in a flash.

“It looked like a battleground,” said Gad Yaacobi, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. “Bodies, blood everywhere, a horrible sight.”

An anonymous telephone caller to Israeli public television claimed responsibility for the explosion in the name of the militant Islamic group Hamas. It was the first such attack in Israel since Hamas and another group, Islamic Jihad, launched a series of suicide bombings a year ago that killed 60 people.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat publicly condemned the bombing as terrorism and telephoned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to offer condolences.

But Netanyahu blamed Arafat’s Palestinian Authority for having given “a green light” to extremists to carry out violence against Israel.

It was not immediately clear if the bombing would deal a crippling blow to the fragile Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Netanyahu, elected last May on a promise to get tough on terrorism, is under pressure from far-right members of his coalition government to cease peace efforts with the Palestinians.

“This government is not prepared to continue with a process in which there is a series of attacks,” Netanyahu said, adding that he will weigh his options over the next few days.

The government slapped a closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, preventing most Palestinians from entering Israel. And security chiefs from both sides held an acrimonious meeting in which Israel demanded that the Palestinians rearrest scores of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders recently freed from jail and that further violence be prevented.

The cafe explosion followed two days of clashes between rock-throwing Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers over Israel’s decision to break ground on a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

More than 180 Palestinians were treated at West Bank hospitals Friday for tear-gas inhalation and, in some cases, injuries from rubber bullets.

Police said about 6 1/2 pounds of explosives were used in the Tel Aviv bomb, which was studded with nails and steel ball bearings to maximize damage.

Crying waiters and stunned customers gathered in the glass-strewn streets around the restaurant as rabbis mopped up the blood and carnage in keeping with Jewish law. Neighbors wrung their hands over blown-out windows and argued politics with strangers.

Nechama Milstein, an off-duty police welfare officer who was having lunch with friends at the cafe when the explosion occurred, was among the injured.

“It really happens like they say,” Milstein said. “All of a sudden, you hear a loud boom, and then there’s a moment of silence.

“It was so quiet, and the ceiling fell on us.”

Among those wounded was a 6-month-old girl dressed in a red-and-blue clown costume that was shredded in the blast. Her head was matted with blood, and she screamed as she was carried from the scene by a police woman. She was later reported in stable condition with leg wounds, but her mother was believed to be among the dead.

Purim is a fanciful holiday when children dress in costumes to celebrate the deliverance of the Jews of ancient Persia from a plot to slaughter them.

The actual holiday is Sunday in Tel Aviv and Monday in the walled city of Jerusalem, but school celebrations and many public festivities were held Friday.

Israeli security officials and Palestinian political leaders had warned Netanyahu that beginning construction on the 6,500-unit project would likely ignite violence among Palestinians who want East Jerusalem to one day be the capital of a Palestinian state.

Israel captured East Jerusalem along with the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed the eastern half of the city. Netanyahu said the government has the right to build anywhere in “united Jerusalem” and will not be bullied by threats of violence.

On Tuesday, he ordered a fleet of four bulldozers under military escort to start digging on a hill in southeastern Jerusalem that Israelis call Har Homa and Palestinians call Jabal Abu Ghneim.

At Tel Aviv’s Ichilov hospital, where many of those wounded in the cafe were taken Friday, Netanyahu angrily dismissed questions linking the Har Homa construction to the attack.

“This line of thought is inherently wrong. To blame Israel for crimes perpetuated against Israel is a terrible line. To say that, in fact, gives legitimacy to terrorism. There can be no justification for the murder of women and children,” Netanyahu said.

Still, many Israelis had expected a terrorist response to the groundbreaking and have avoided buses and other crowded public places in recent days.

They even feared an attack might take place on Purim, as it did a year ago when 13 people died in a suicide bombing at Tel Aviv’s busy Dizengoff shopping center.

Tel Aviv Mayor Roni Milo, who attended a memorial service Thursday for the victims of last year’s bombing, said, “We had hopes that this Purim would pass in peace, but unfortunately it hasn’t.”

Israel had braced for violence Friday after the Muslim noon prayers, but the focus was on Jerusalem.

The Tel Aviv attack occurred while 2,500 regular and paramilitary border police were deployed around the Al Aqsa mosque compound--one of Islam’s holiest shrines--and near the Har Homa site.

Cafe manager Roi Kodman burst into hysterical tears on the sidewalk after the blast.

“I saw him, he wandered among the tables, he went up to the waitress . . . and then it happened . . . glass, everything exploded . . . so much blood. A woman lying there, a baby, a little baby. . . . I wanted to help, but I didn’t know what to do,” Kodman said before being led away by Internal Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani.

The charred body of the bomber lay at the scene for several hours after the attack, partly covered by a blanket.

Israeli radio and television identified him as a 28-year-old resident of the West Bank village of Zurif, near Hebron, but did not give his name. The army imposed a curfew on Zurif, prohibiting entry and exit.

The bomber reportedly had a permit to work in Israel and was once employed in a Tel Aviv restaurant. His parents apparently reported him missing to Palestinian authorities two weeks ago.

Many of the wounded were taken to Ichilov hospital, where Yitzhak Roitman searched frantically for his wife and three children, who had been in the cafe at the time of the blast. He broke into tears before his cellular telephone rang with a call from his son.

“Mark, Mark,” he cried to his 8-year-old. “I’ll be right there. Mark, we’ll all be OK. Don’t cry, my sweet son. I will come to you.”

Nearby, Netanyahu raged at Palestinian leaders for having released dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants from jail in recent weeks. Under pressure from the United States, Palestinian police rounded up the Islamic extremists opposed to the peace process after the last wave of suicide bombings in February and March 1996.

“The army’s security branches warned that terrorist organizations understood that they got a green light from the Palestinian Authority, and to my sorrow it’s become clear that they were right, and the terrorist organizations, on the strength of that green light, acted,” Netanyahu said.

Without mentioning Arafat by name, he added: “I want to say also that the Palestinian Authority did not do a thing or half a thing to refute that understanding, and therefore it bears very heavy responsibility.”

Arafat has told diplomats that he released the militants in an effort to bring them into the political process--a move U.S. officials had warned could backfire.

President Clinton condemned the suicide bombing Friday from Helsinki, Finland, where he was holding a summit with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. Clinton indirectly criticized Arafat, saying: “There must be absolutely no doubt in the minds of the friends and enemies of the peace process that the Palestinian Authority is unalterably opposed to terror. This is essential to negotiating a just peace, and I will do everything I can toward that peace.”

But Israeli officials remained angry at the United States for a State Department dismissal of its “green light” warnings earlier in the week.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said there was no evidence Arafat condoned or allowed violence.

But Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister David Levy said, “This doubt seems to have contributed to those who think that it is possible to take two simultaneous courses, one public calming path and the other that releases murderers and hints the coast is clear.”

Among the Hamas leaders released was Ibrahim Makadmeh, allegedly the head of secret Hamas military cells that carried out last year’s suicide bombings.

Makadmeh told a Hamas rally in Gaza on Friday that only bombs could stop Israel from building a new Jewish settlement in historically Arab East Jerusalem.

“We must have the control and the power to stop the bulldozers of the enemy--and our unarmed people will not prevent it. But the holy warriors carrying explosives on their shoulders and exploding the enemies of God [will],” Makadmeh said.

Late Friday, Israel radio quoted Palestinian sources saying Makadmeh had been rearrested, but that could not be immediately confirmed.