Suicide Bombing Fuels Israeli Fears of Terrorism

A Palestinian with a backpack full of explosives pedaled his bike into the perimeter of an Israeli army post Thursday and set off a tremendous blast, stoking Israeli panic over the likelihood of a wave of deadly terrorist attacks.

The 23-year-old student of Islamic law killed himself and injured one Israeli soldier at an isolated base in the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip. It was the first suicide bombing in a month of Israeli-Palestinian clashes and may have been timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the slaying of a militant Islamic Jihad leader.

Israelis were already on high alert after military commanders repeatedly warned of bombings by Palestinian extremists in crowded public places.

Israelis have been staying home in droves. Restaurants and open-air markets are virtually deserted. Police are boarding and inspecting public buses, which are nearly empty. Gun sales are reported up by as much as 50%.

As if that’s not enough, another war front has opened in cyberspace.

Pro-Palestinian computer hackers managed to paralyze Web sites for Israel’s parliament, army and Foreign Ministry by flooding them with e-mail or electronic signals known as pings. The army Web site was able to go back online by hiring AT&T; as a backup provider after Israel’s main Internet connection, Netvision, came under attack. But by late Thursday the Foreign Ministry site had been dark for 30 hours.

The cyber spat began earlier this month when Israelis en masse bombarded a Web site belonging to Hezbollah, an Islamic movement in Lebanon, causing the site to crash. Hezbollah had captured three Israeli soldiers near Israel’s border with Lebanon.

After various Israeli sites were taken down, other hackers went after another Hezbollah site this week, replacing its home page with an Israeli flag and a recording of “Hatikva,” the Israeli national anthem, according to a report in the newspaper Beirut Daily Star.

While the Internet spam and counter-spam have so far been limited to informational sites, they raise the specter of far more serious damage, industry analysts said.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Jihad movement, in a communique released in Beirut, claimed responsibility for the Gaza suicide bombing and threatened additional attacks. Late Thursday, hundreds of Palestinians chanted “Death to the Jews” at the funeral in Gaza for Nabil Arair, who blew himself up when his bike struck the concrete barriers outside an army post that guards a Jewish settlement.

Arair was a member of the youth branch of Islamic Jihad.

Israeli military officials said Thursday that they believe the attack, while minor as such bombings go, was a harbinger of terrorism.

Scores of Israeli Jews have been killed through the years in terrorist bombings on buses and at sidewalk cafes, but a serious attack inside Israel proper has not been recorded in more than two years. Army intelligence credited Israel’s jailing or killing of key extremist leaders and the Palestinian Authority’s crackdown on militant Islamic groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Separately, Jordan’s King Abdullah II last year expelled several Hamas officials from Amman, his capital, eliminating an important base of support.

At the height of the current uprising, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat released scores of men from jail, including many experts in bomb-making. Although Arafat later ordered the men rearrested, some remain at large, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.

Israeli Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland said this week that the releases and the integration of extremist factions into Arafat’s political umbrella have given a “green light” to attacks.

When the clashes between Palestinians and Israelis erupted late last month, Arafat turned to Hamas and other militants for support.

Coordinating committees that include Arafat’s Fatah movement, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and 10 other factions began focusing on how to better organize the protests.

With Arafat’s acquiescence, Israeli military officials say, militant groups will more easily be able to move equipment, open dormant caches and resume training. However, with their infrastructure impaired, it will still be difficult for extremists to cross into Israel and resume a bombing campaign, says Ely Karmon, an Israeli counter-terrorism expert.

“They are definitely weaker after two years. . . ,” Karmon said. “[But they] could perpetrate something even if they are not ready and even if operationally they are not very successful.”

A senior Palestinian security official, Maj. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaydeh, denied Israeli suggestions that the Palestinian Authority would condone terrorism.

A spokesman for Islamic Jihad in Gaza defended the Thursday bombing, saying that militants had the right to attack “occupation forces” as long as Israeli soldiers and settlers continued to attack Palestinians.

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Times staff writer Rebecca Trounson in the Gaza Strip contributed to this report.