4 Dead, Dozens Hurt as 3 Bombs Go Off in Israel

Three terrorist bombings in less than 24 hours left four people dead and dozens of Israelis injured Tuesday and early today, while Jews and Palestinians clashed in the volatile city of Hebron, inflaming tensions to the breaking point.

With Israelis almost universally proclaiming that their patience has run out, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came under increased pressure to strike back hard at Palestinian militants who the army said also shot and killed a 10-month-old Jewish girl Monday.

“We simply have to chop off these murderous arms and to hit at those who come to strike at us and at those who send them,” Education Minister Limor Livnat said, voicing a sentiment heard from the streets to the halls of government.

In addition to two bombings Tuesday in Jerusalem, an apparent suicide bomber early this morning killed himself and two Israelis at a gas station between the West Bank town of Kalkilya and the central Israeli town of Kfar Sava, Israeli television reported. Up to seven Israelis were reportedly wounded. Police said they also defused a bomb in a downtown market in the coastal city of Netanya this morning.

A Palestinian official said all deaths are regrettable but put the blame on Israel’s continuing military occupation of parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A bloody revolt has claimed more than 430 lives, about 80% of them Palestinian, in the last six months.

Sharon’s aides said the surge in violence, coinciding with the Arab League summit in neighboring Jordan, was an attempt by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to provoke Israel into a brutal retaliation. Despite demands from some Israelis that Sharon invade Palestinian-controlled territory, a major response is not expected until after the summit.

Jewish settlers in Hebron, where the infant was shot to death, weren’t ready to wait. Vowing revenge, they charged into Palestinian neighborhoods and fought with residents until the army intervened. At least one settler and six Palestinians were injured in skirmishing throughout the day. Jewish and Muslim cemeteries in the West Bank city were vandalized, and Palestinian storefronts were ransacked.

After dark, the settlers again rampaged into Palestinian areas, and an 11-year-old Palestinian boy was killed while watching a gun battle between Palestinians and Israeli troops south of Hebron, his family told reporters. Elsewhere, an Israeli woman was critically injured by stone-throwers.

Earlier, with Israeli anger over the baby’s death already at fever pitch, Jerusalem on Tuesday was hit with the two bombings.

The more serious of the attacks came at lunchtime, when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated nail-studded explosives strapped to his waist as he stood beside the No. 6 passenger bus in a busy intersection in the French Hill area of northern Jerusalem.

The bomber’s body was split in two and hurled into the air, witnesses said. The blast shattered the windows of the orange and white bus. At least 30 people were injured, including passersby and several high school students who were passengers, police said.

“People started running and screaming, and there were body parts all over the road,” said Danny Serero, 35, who was sitting in his car at a nearby traffic light.

Nearly six hours earlier, during the morning rush hour, a stolen car loaded with explosives blew up in the industrial suburb of Talpiot on the south side of Jerusalem. Five people were slightly wounded.

“The people of Israel must be strong,” Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert said at the scene of the French Hill bombing, as Israeli youths crowded around him and chanted, “Out with the Arabs!”

“This is war,” the mayor said.

Several Palestinian factions, including the radical Islamic Jihad, reportedly claimed responsibility for the bombings. For all Israel’s depressing history with terrorist bombings, two in one day is rare.

An inveterate hawk associated with all of Israel’s major wars, Sharon was faulted by the hard right and by people within his government for failing to retaliate more forcefully. Critics accused him of acting too much like his predecessor, Ehud Barak, whom he crushed in elections last month by promising to crack down on Palestinians to “restore security” to Israelis.

“It is high time that Sharon act like Sharon,” said Michael Kleiner, a member of parliament. “If he is not able to act the way people expect Sharon to act, then maybe he should go home.”

But Sharon begged to differ. He assured militant settlers that he was “still the same Sharon” and that they will see a new policy in a matter of days.

Hebron, meanwhile, was seething.

A few hundred Jewish settlers live in tiny enclaves, under heavy Israeli military guard, in the city of more than 100,000 Palestinians. About 30,000 Palestinians live in Israeli-controlled neighborhoods and were once again under a tight curfew. Although the Palestinians are not allowed to leave their homes, the Jewish settlers, many of whom are armed, can roam freely.

Angry over Monday’s killing of 10-month-old Shalhevet Pas by what the army said was sniper fire, settlers repeatedly tried to march through a cemetery and up a hill into the Palestinian-controlled Abu Sneineh neighborhood that was deemed the source of the gunfire.

The Israeli army made sporadic attempts to corral and wrestle to the ground dozens of settlers, who broke free and charged again. Some settlers gave the soldiers a severe tongue-lashing. Others trashed several cars before being run off by Palestinians firing guns, witnesses said.

“Last night and today was the most horrifying in many years,” said 50-year-old Muyassar Sharabati, who lives in the first house inside Palestinian-controlled Hebron and thus found herself on the front line.

It was the first time settlers had entered her neighborhood, she said. They hurled stones at her house, broke windows and solar panels on the roof for heating water, and wrecked her son-in-law’s car.

Palestinians later marched in Hebron, burning U.S. and Israeli flags and demanding support from the Arab world. They threw stones at Israeli soldiers, who fired back with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas.

The settlers want the army to reoccupy the Palestinian hills around their enclaves. In a macabre gesture, Shalhevet’s parents said they would not bury her until the army moved into the area, even though Jewish law requires quick interment.

Col. Noam Tibon, commander of the Israeli troops in Hebron, told reporters that the girl’s killer had been identified as a member of Arafat’s Fatah militia and will be punished.