Peace Process on Hold After Blast in Jerusalem

A pair of suicide bombers rammed a car loaded with explosives into Jerusalem’s crowded central market during the height of morning shopping Friday, killing themselves and injuring at least 23 people. The blast brought the fragile Israeli-Palestinian peace process to an immediate halt.

Israeli Cabinet ministers, meeting less than a mile away in a marathon debate over the 2-week-old Wye agreement, looked out the window, saw the smoke and suspended discussion of the accord indefinitely.

The Cabinet issued a statement demanding that the Palestinian Authority wage an “all-out war” against the Islamic militants blamed for this and previous attacks.

The suicide bombing, which was the second targeting Israelis in the last eight days, caused relatively few injuries compared with other such attacks in this troubled region. But its impact on the Middle East peace process, newly revived after a 19-month deadlock, could be profound.

Even before the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was struggling to gain approval from his right-wing Cabinet for the U.S.-brokered accord. The agreement calls on Israel to transfer another chunk of West Bank land to the Palestinians over three months in return for concrete Palestinian steps against Islamic extremists. The bombing will make it even tougher for him to push that deal through.

On Friday evening, in a rare, direct appeal to the Israeli people, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat appeared on Israel TV and condemned the bombing as “criminal.”

“We must work together, Israelis and Palestinians, to confront these terrorist acts that aim to destroy the peace process,” Arafat said.

As he has before, he vowed to make a “100% effort” to stop acts of violence against Israelis. Late Friday, a senior official of Arafat’s government said Palestinian police were rounding up scores of Islamic militants in the West Bank for questioning in the Jerusalem bombing.

The Palestinian leader also telephoned Netanyahu to express sorrow over the attack. Netanyahu thanked him for the call, a spokesman said, but insisted that the Palestinians step up their efforts significantly in the battle against terrorism.

Clinton Denounces ‘Cowardly Act’

In Washington, President Clinton, whose personal mediation was widely credited with helping the two sides reach agreement at the recent summit, deplored the bombing as an “outrageous and cowardly act by enemies of peace,” but he insisted that the accord should proceed without delay.

Clinton said the Wye agreement “is the only answer to today’s act of criminal terror . . . the best way to protect the safety of the Israeli people, the best way to achieve the aspirations of the Palestinians.”

In a decision that Israel insisted was unrelated to the bombing or the peace process, Netanyahu’s Cabinet on Friday also approved the release of bids for construction of a highly controversial East Jerusalem housing project.

Groundbreaking at the site in March 1997 sparked a crisis with the Palestinians that led to the long impasse in peacemaking, and the decision to proceed is likely to lead to new Palestinian protests.

“This decision creates the kind of atmosphere that leads to terrorist acts,” Hassan Asfour, a Palestinian peace negotiator, said of the decision to move ahead with building on the hilltop known as Har Homa in Hebrew and Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arabic. “We are asking the Israelis to reconsider.”

Retorted Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Illan: “If the building on a barren hill can provoke terrorism, then there is really no hope at all. It is irritating, possibly, to the Palestinians, but the prime minister decided that it was the right time to issue the bids to the contractors. It wasn’t intended as a response” to the bombing.

In telephone calls to Jerusalem police Friday, the Islamic movement Hamas and its shadowy military wing, the Izzidin al-Qassam brigades, claimed responsibility for the market bomb attack.

But late Friday, Israeli Justice Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said Israel knew “with a high degree of certainty” that the bombing was carried out by Islamic Jihad, a smaller extremist group that had been relatively quiet since its leader was killed by Israel in 1995.

Sources in the Palestinian security services later identified one of those involved in the attack as Yusuf Ali Zughair, an 18-year-old resident of the Anata refugee camp near East Jerusalem and an Islamic Jihad member. A man who answered the phone at Zughair’s home said the young man had left home early Friday and had not returned.

The second man, whose name was not given, was said to be a relative of Zughair, possibly from the West Bank city of Janin.

Whoever carried it out, the bombing appeared to be amateurish in its design and execution, police said, which might have helped avert a greater tragedy.

Israeli political leaders acknowledged that the toll from the bombing was light, with only a handful still hospitalized by day’s end, including a 54-year-old woman suffering from heart problems. But they said it underscored the continuing threat to Israelis from Islamic militants bent on derailing the peace process through violence.

On Oct. 19, after the Wye plantation talks got underway, a man identified by police as a Palestinian hurled two grenades into a bus station in Beersheba in southern Israel, injuring more than 60, most of them lightly.

On Oct. 29, a suicide bomber tried to ram a car rigged with explosives into a school bus full of Jewish children in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli army jeep managed to intercept the bomber and took the brunt of the blast. The assailant and one soldier were killed, but none of the children was hurt.

“For the third time in the last two weeks, we are saved by some miracle,” Industry and Trade Minister Natan Sharansky said after Friday’s bombing. “It is difficult to rely on this all the time.”

A Cheerful Market Erupts Into Panic

The explosion, which came at 9:45 a.m. on a warm fall day, sent a cloud of black smoke into bright blue sky over Jerusalem. The market was crowded with shoppers buying fish, fruit and vegetables in preparation for the Jewish Sabbath. Instantly, the bomb transformed the cheerful, bustling market scene into one of confusion and panic.

Arik Shraga was standing outside the tiny grocery store he owns on Jaffa Street when he spotted a small, red Fiat moving slowly up the street. He heard a series of pops and saw smoke drifting from the car. A few seconds later, the blast came, sending pieces of the car flying up to two blocks away.

The car’s chassis was hurled 50 to 80 feet inside the market, coming to rest between stalls of bananas and mandarin oranges.

“There were so many people running,” said Shraga, 41. “From the first moment, everyone was screaming and crying and running.”

Soon after the blast, the charred remains of the Fiat lay crumpled in the street. Ribbons of blood could be seen nearby. Two bodies, one nearly severed at the waist, were also visible in the minutes before police roped off the area.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews in black hats and long coats pressed up against police barricades, straining to see what was happening. A small group of teenage boys thrust their fists into the air and shouted “Death to Arafat” and “Death to Arabs.” A few then shouted slogans against Netanyahu for negotiating the latest deal with Arafat, calling the Israeli leader a traitor.

The market, a maze of covered and open-air alleyways packed with small shops and stalls, is at the crowded heart of West Jerusalem and has been targeted before. A double-suicide attack in July 1997 left 16 dead, along with the bombers and nearly 200 injured.

Still, it remains popular with tourists and locals alike, with many drawn by the city’s best produce and lowest prices.

Even Friday, as the two bodies lay in the street, life went on. A short distance away, amid the smells of cilantro and olives, vendors scaled fish and weighed tomatoes and nuts; soldiers ate pita bread with hummus. Shoppers bought fresh flowers and fruit.

Yosef Cohen, 69, said he comes to the market for his Sabbath shopping every Friday. He was in a bus stopped at a traffic light on Jaffa Street when the bomb went off.

“I didn’t see the car, I just heard a huge explosion,” Cohen said. “If the bus had been one second later, we’d all be dead.”

Several witnesses said small blasts, like gunfire, could be heard from the car before the main explosion, and that seemed to alert many people to danger. Cohen credited a coconut vendor with saving many people when he noticed the car, smoking and making noise as it drove slowly toward the market, and yelled for everyone to run.

Golan Peretz, 22, of the coastal city of Netanya, was not so lucky. Peretz, who sells medical supplies to pharmacies, was visiting several small shops in the market when the bomb went off.

Speaking from a hospital bed where he was being treated for shock and bruises, Peretz said it was his second brush with terrorism. He was badly injured in a 1995 attack on a Jerusalem bus stop in which several Israeli soldiers were killed.

“These peace agreements, they don’t mean anything,” Peretz said. “The Palestinians keep promising that it’ll be good for everyone, but nothing ever changes.”

The Israeli Cabinet, however, was insisting that change must come, demanding that the Palestinians take “decisive steps” against the infrastructure of the extremist groups. The Cabinet set no date for the resumption of debate on the Wye accord.

Bar-Illan said, though, that the accord could still be ratified relatively soon if the Palestinians convince Israel of their intention to crack down on militants. However, it is unlikely that the strict 12-week timetable for the agreement can still be met.

Anti-Israeli Clauses Cast Off as Promised

As if to show that it is determined to carry out its obligations under the agreement, the Palestinian Cabinet announced Friday that it had fulfilled one of its commitments ahead of schedule.

Meeting in regular Friday night session in the West Bank city of Ramallah, it condemned the bombing, according to a statement. It also announced that its executive committee had approved a January letter from Arafat to Clinton renouncing anti-Israeli clauses of the Palestinian covenant, an obligation due to be carried out next week.