Attacks Spoil Haifa’s Pride in Coexistence

A suicide bombing at a busy bus stop--the second such attack on this northern port city in a week--has shaken Haifa’s confidence in itself as a rare example of Arabs and Jews living in relative harmony.

The attack came as Haifans--and Israelis--struggled to lift the gloomy sense of siege imposed by a string of suicide attacks and celebrate the start of the joyous, eight-day festival of Hanukkah.

The only person killed Sunday was the bomber, Nimr abu Sayfien, 20, from the northern West Bank. He survived the detonation of explosives strapped to his body but was shot to death by a police officer who said he thought the gravely wounded bomber had moved his hand to trigger a second explosion.

Still, eight passersby were injured in the blast at an intersection packed with morning commuters and soldiers heading back to their bases on the first day of the Israeli workweek. And though that toll was far less than the one exacted a week earlier by a suicide bomber on a bus--he killed 15 people and injured dozens--Haifans said that the damage done to their city extends far beyond the killed and wounded.

“Nobody has any faith now in any Arabs,” said Vera Ilinitz, a 42-year-old beautician and immigrant from Latvia who has lived in Haifa for 12 years. “Every time there is a terror attack, there is a little more erosion in relations between us.”

A trio of her customers nodded in agreement.

The bus bomber struck just a few feet from Ilinitz’s shop in the mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood of Halisa. Since then, she said, she’s had a hard time sleeping.

“Somebody brought him here,” she said. “How did he find his way around Haifa? Somebody must have helped him. You can never know what the Arabs feel in their hearts.”

After Sunday’s blast, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with his Cabinet and hinted that Israel will ratchet up its response to Palestinian attacks.

“In light of what is going on, we will apparently have to increase our [military] activity,” he said in remarks broadcast on Israel Radio.

U.S. envoy Anthony C. Zinni, meanwhile, abruptly cut short a meeting with Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs in Jerusalem after telling them that without “significant progress” toward a cease-fire within 48 hours, he would return to Washington.

Zinni came to Jerusalem last month with an open-ended commitment to stay until the two sides agreed to stop fighting. His mission was quickly derailed by attacks and retaliations. Five Palestinian suicide bombings in a week killed more than two dozen people and injured scores. Israeli retaliatory bombing raids in the West Bank and Gaza Strip reduced Palestinian security buildings to rubble and threatened Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s grip on power.

Israelis were briefly cheered Sunday by a visit from New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and a high-level delegation from his state that included Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki. The trio toured bombing sites in mostly Jewish West Jerusalem and lighted the first Hanukkah candle in Zion Square, where two suicide bombers killed 11 people on Dec. 1.

But despite the enthusiastic welcome accorded the mayor and his delegation, and festivities surrounding the start of the holiday that celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the ancient Greeks, hope is fading here for an imminent end to violence that has claimed nearly 1,000 lives since September 2000.

Haifans are even wondering whether their city can preserve its spirit of coexistence in the face of ongoing bloodshed.

Mayor Amram Mitzna said the suspicion that Haifa’s Arab citizens had anything to do with either attack in their city is baseless, and he called it worrisome that many Jewish residents appear to believe that they did. On Sunday, the mayor threatened to sue a local tabloid, claiming it had libeled the city’s Arabs by running a story last week alleging that cells of the militant Islamic movement Hamas are operating in Haifa. “Hamas Is Here!” was the banner headline.

Such stories, Mitzna said, “are nonsense, totally untrue.”

One of the few elected officials in this nation who is still working doggedly to promote coexistence after more than 14 months of violence, Mitzna cut short a municipal fund-raising trip in Los Angeles to rush home after last week’s bus bombing. On Sunday, he went to Rambam Hospital to visit victims of the morning’s suicide attack and then made condolence calls on families of those who died in the bus blast.

“I visited an Arab woman who was injured today, who was being treated by an Arab doctor and a Russian immigrant nurse. Two Jewish Israeli soldiers, also from today’s bombing, were lying on beds nearby,” Mitzna said in an interview in his office. “This is Haifa.”

About 12% of Haifa’s 270,000 residents are Arabs, according to city spokesman Zvi Roger, and 70,000 are immigrants who have arrived here--mostly from the former Soviet Union--in the last 10 years. The city was mixed for decades before the birth of the Jewish state, and there is a strong Arab middle class. Jews and Arabs sometimes live in the same neighborhoods, even in the same buildings--a rarity in most Israeli communities.

Now nearly midway through a second five-year term, Mitzna said he is confident that Haifa will remain a tolerant place to live, despite increased tensions in the wake of the attacks.

Two days before Sunday’s bombing, the former Israeli army general and commander of the West Bank said, he attended an iftar meal--the evening repast that breaks the daylong fast Muslims observe during the holy month of Ramadan--at the home of a prominent Arab businessman. Other guests included Arabs and Jews, Christians and Muslims. Sunday evening, he was scheduled to light the first candle of Hanukkah at a ceremony near City Hall.

Next Saturday, the mayor said, he will open the city’s weeklong Holiday of Holidays. The event celebrates Hanukkah, Christmas and Ramadan with a street festival in an Arab neighborhood, Wadi Nisnas.

The head of Israel’s internal intelligence service, the Shin Bet, has assured him, Mitzna said, that Haifa has not become a particular target for bombers, that the two attacks a week apart were merely a consequence of opportunity, not an intentional assault on a bastion of coexistence.

“If there is a series of bombings, I cannot tell you what will happen,” he said. “I can only tell you that after the terrorist act last Sunday--and the toll was 15 citizens killed and more than 40 wounded--I believe that coexistence was strengthened here. Both Arabs and Jews understood that it was just luck that no Arabs were killed in the attack.”

After the bus bombing, Mitzna said, a Muslim religious judge and an Arab Christian bishop came to a City Council meeting to denounce such attacks as contrary to the beliefs of their religions.

At least one other resident Sunday agreed with the mayor. On Allenby Street, where Jews and Arabs live and work together, Ahmad Qadi said coexistence in Haifa will withstand the assaults of bombers.

“A guy like that bomber on the bus, he doesn’t care who he is hurting. He just wants to kill people,” said Qadi, 32, an Israeli Arab born in Haifa. “Jews and Arabs know that we are in the same boat, and in Haifa, it is a pretty good boat.”