Palestinians Arrest Hamas Chief After Blast

Palestinian authorities placed the leader of the radical Islamic group Hamas under house arrest Thursday in the immediate aftermath of a deadly suicide bombing aimed at a school bus full of Jewish settler children.

One Israeli soldier and the Palestinian bomber were killed. The attacker crashed a car loaded with explosives into the school bus convoy on an isolated road through the sand dunes of the Gaza Strip, but the bus’ Israeli military escort bore the brunt of the explosion.

The youngsters escaped, tearful but unharmed. Eight other people were injured, including three Bedouin children living nearby.

It was the first fatal car bombing in more than a year and immediately tested a new and fragile Middle East land-for-security deal. Israel has warned that it will not hand over additional land to Palestinian control until the Palestinians combat terrorism effectively. Thursday’s attack had the potential to freeze a peace process that was only just reviving.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s move against Hamas is risky, but he clearly needed to show a determination to carry out security measures outlined in the Wye Plantation accord, in which the Palestinians pledged to combat violence in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from an additional 13% of the West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, making a hospital visit to a soldier wounded in the attack, demanded that the Palestinians fight terrorism. His government gave a cautious welcome to the move against Hamas but said it would have to be a sustained campaign.

“We regard with extreme severity the attempt to murder [dozens] of little children on their way to school,” Netanyahu said. “This is the test of the [Wye] agreement, and we want to see the Palestinian Authority pass the test successfully. . . . It’s in the interest of peace.”

The Clinton administration, which brokered the Wye accord last week, condemned the bombing and welcomed the “close cooperation” of Israeli and Palestinian security forces investigating it. In fact, however, the two sides only narrowly averted a serious gun battle when Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians said to be fleeing the scene. Palestinian police opened fire in response. Quick intervention by senior commanders halted the gunfire.

Under pressure from both the Israelis and U.S. officials, Arafat moved swiftly to punish Islamic militants who reportedly claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Scores of Hamas militants were rounded up Thursday evening. And, following an emergency meeting with his security advisors, Arafat took the unprecedented step of ordering the house arrest of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. Police surrounded Yassin’s home and blocked journalists and other visitors attempting to enter.

The cleric, who must use a wheelchair, has issued many inflammatory statements against making peace with Israel. This was the first time that Arafat has dared to challenge the influential Hamas leader in such direct fashion.

Hamas is a popular, fast-growing movement that has, in addition to its military wing, a vast social network providing education, work and meals. Arafat’s associates often have warned that taking on Hamas, and Yassin in particular, could lead to a Palestinian civil war.

But keeping the peace process on course means that Arafat gets land and status, and moves closer to an independent state. The potential horror of Thursday’s bombing handed him the opportunity to act.

Yassin was confined to his modest cinder-block home along a Gaza alleyway because of “recent statements against the Palestinian national interests,” said an aide to Arafat’s civil police chief, Ghazi Jabali, who issued the order.

Yassin, who spent eight years of a life sentence in an Israeli jail until he was freed in 1997 and given a hero’s welcome in Gaza, spent much of Thursday speaking to reporters by telephone. “This [arrest] is in the service of Zionism,” he told one Arabic television station. “The Israeli occupation caused the [bomb] attack,” he told Israeli television.

Late Thursday, authorities severed his phone lines after formally notifying him of the restrictions against him, Yassin’s family said. The 63-year-old cleric will not be allowed to leave his house for prayers today, the Muslim holy day.

Earlier Thursday, Netanyahu noted that the suspected terrorist who carried out the bombing came from territory that had been under Arafat’s control ever since most of the Gaza Strip was handed to the Palestinians under an agreement signed in May 1994.

“It is not possible that Gaza will serve as a hotbed for such gangs of murderers, who declare in front of the whole world that their intention is to destroy the state of Israel and to annihilate the lives of Israelis,” Netanyahu said as he visited the wounded.

In the Gaza Strip, about 5,000 Jewish settlers live in a string of enclaves surrounded by nearly a million Palestinians. The settlers travel on well-paved roads that are posted with Israeli army watchtowers and bases, and, like the school buses, they often travel in convoys with military guards. Most of their settlements are behind gates or fenced in with barbed wire.

On Thursday morning, the armored red-and-white bus carrying 45 children between 6 and 8 years old was making its daily 15-mile run from the Jewish settlement of Khar Darom to the Atzoma settlement, where they attend the religious Talmud Torah school. An army jeep went in front, another brought up the rear.

According to accounts from Israeli and Palestinian security officials and witnesses, an Opel roared up after emerging, apparently, from a Palestinian flour mill and attempted to ram the bus. The lead army vehicle managed to block the car, and the explosives detonated.

Children screamed and cried at the deafening sound as the bus driver slammed the vehicle into reverse to escape harm. The bus fled to a nearby army base. The children were then transported to school, where counselors and rabbis talked them through the ordeal.

“We are religious people,” said Yigal Kirshenzeft, the school’s director. “We understand that everything comes from heaven. Things good, things not so good. And not everything can be understood. . . . The point is we do not stop living. We go on as usual.”

A couple of hours after the blast, the incinerated Palestinian car sat crumpled in the road, and the smashed and charred army vehicle was being hauled away. The school bus was a mile or so up the road. Its front was covered with tiny splattered drops of blood and the windshield was a spider web of cracks.

Tsipi Buskili, a Jewish settler from Khar Darom whose children were in the convoy, was inspecting the bus. Like many of the settlers, she saw what happened in religious terms and said she and the other families were determined to remain on the land they cherish.

“Thanks to God, we are in his protection,” she said when asked about fears about safety.

Settler groups said the bombing showed the danger posed to them by peace agreements that cede territory to their Palestinian enemy. As they have for the last week, they again chastised Netanyahu for sacrificing their security.

“The response from the Palestinian Authority is murder,” settlement leader Arali Tzur said, fuming. “If that isn’t enough to stop the agreement, what is?”

The wounded included three Bedouin children. They lived in a concrete shack in the sand alongside the road, a few yards from where the car blew up. The explosion caved in the corrugated roof of their home, their grandmother Fatma Abu Mondein said.

Also wounded was a Palestinian man shot by Israeli troops who said he was fleeing and refused to stop. Israeli forces have control of roads used by settlers and can chase suspects into Palestinian territory only in “hot pursuit.”