Despite Deadly Bombing, Talks on Track in Israel

Israeli and Palestinian officials forged ahead in cease-fire talks Wednesday despite the killing of seven people by a Palestinian suicide bomber who boarded a crowded bus at rush hour and blew himself up.

The deadly attack dealt a blow to efforts by U.S. envoy Anthony C. Zinni to push the two sides into a truce. It brought an angry denunciation from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon but, in the end, did not derail a key round of negotiations Wednesday evening. Israeli officials said they would refrain from major retaliation for the time being.

The negotiations adjourned just before midnight Wednesday with no announcement but an agreement to meet again.

Momentum for a cease-fire had built with the daylong visit Tuesday of Vice President Dick Cheney, who signaled to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat that he will be rewarded with a meeting if he makes a 100% effort to stop the violence.

Perhaps with that in mind, the Palestinian Authority condemned the Wednesday morning bus bombing and ordered attacks on civilians inside Israel to halt “despite the bleeding wounds of Palestinian civilians.” The Palestinian statement said that Arafat’s efforts to end Israeli blockades of Palestinian territory are undermined by suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians.

Sharon Blames Arafat

The radical Islamic Jihad, which opposes peace with Israel, claimed responsibility for the blast near the northern Israeli Arab town of Umm al Fahm. But Sharon blamed Arafat.

“What we are seeing is that Arafat has not strayed from his policy of terror at this stage,” Sharon said after a meeting with his security Cabinet. “He has not yet taken any step . . . and this is, of course, something that we view as very grave.”

Sharon said that he had consulted with Zinni and that the two men see “eye to eye” on the matter. Still, a senior Israeli official said his country would react to the bombing with restraint to avoid being seen as the party driving an escalation in the violence.

In fact, that is Zinni’s most daunting challenge: to prevent another lurch in the cycle of attack and revenge. That means persuading Sharon and Israel to refrain from military reprisal, while trying to prevent additional Palestinian attacks. Every previous cease-fire agreement--there have been about nine in the past 18 months--has fallen victim to a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed that has fueled the deadliest fighting here in decades.

“This morning’s attack was severe,” Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said. “But Israelis and Palestinians are in the midst of getting a cease-fire on track. We must not stop. On the contrary, we must hasten this process, in spite of the pain.”

Zinni met with Arafat a few hours after the explosion to review a cease-fire plan first put forth last summer by CIA Director George J. Tenet. It was the subject of the high-level security meetings late Wednesday, reportedly at the home of U.S. Ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer in a Tel Aviv suburb. Participants included Zinni and two top security officials from each side.

Nabil Shaath, a minister in Arafat’s government, said the Palestinians will continue to insist that security talks are coupled with political ones. “If Israel does not withdraw its forces and lift its closure, we are not going to engage in security arrangements,” he said.

Even if a cease-fire is declared, there is little hope here that it will substantially change the basic dynamics of a conflict that has claimed more than 1,500 lives.

The Tenet plan calls for Israel to pull its troops back to positions held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before September 2000, the start of the current Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule. Sharon is reluctant to order that extensive a withdrawal because it would mean dismantling numerous military installations that Israel says provide security but that have carved up Palestinian territory.

Under the same plan, Palestinian authorities would be required to arrest militants and confiscate illegal arms--steps that Arafat is reluctant to take, especially given the power and influence of armed militias that have varying degrees of loyalty to the Palestinian leader.

If a cease-fire is declared under the Tenet guidelines, Israelis and Palestinians would gradually move into peace talks under the auspices of a plan drafted last year by an international panel led by former Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Maine).

But after the fighting of the last year and a half, the suicide bombings that have killed dozens of Jews and Israel’s devastating raids into Palestinian refugee camps and cities, the repository of hatred is so great that neither side has much faith that the other will comply with a cease-fire.

Even Israel’s optimistic foreign minister, Shimon Peres, said Wednesday that any cease-fire would not be “hermetic or comprehensive”--meaning, violence will continue.

The latest carnage was on bus No. 823 traveling from Tel Aviv to Nazareth in northern Israel. It was the third time that this route, which crosses land dotted by Israeli Arab villages, has been attacked.

Seven people, including four soldiers, were killed along with the bomber. Two of the civilians who were killed were identified as Mogus Mahaneto, 75, and Alon Goldenberg, 28. The third will require DNA testing to be identified, police said.

Almost every passenger on the bus was hurt, a total of more than 30 people suffering from burns, severed limbs and cuts. The injured included Israeli Arabs; other passengers were Jews traveling at the start of Passover vacations.

Soldier Eyed Bomber

The bomber, identified later as 24-year-old Rifat abu Diak, from a village near the West Bank town of Jenin, boarded the bus at Umm al Fahm. He argued briefly with the driver, Yossi Ben-Yosef, who questioned Abu Diak but then decided that he wasn’t suspicious and allowed him to move to the back of the bus.

Soldier Vadim Weinfus said he watched the Palestinian man as he boarded the bus with two older Arab men. When Abu Diak sat, Weinfus noticed something in his coat. The soldier immediately grabbed his gun and started to load a magazine.

“I saw that he was arguing with the man next to him,” Weinfus told reporters. “I saw the uncomfortable expression on the face of the other man, and just as I was about to put the magazine in my gun to somehow stop him, he blew himself up.”

One passenger, Liraz Shiron, told Israeli television that the bomber looked at her and smiled before detonating explosives strapped to his waist.

Bodies were hurled through the windows of the bus. The dead and dying lay on the pavement or were trapped inside the crumpled vehicle.

Some Jewish passengers said they used the route because they thought that the certain presence of Israeli Arabs made a Palestinian attack less likely.

But Kamla Masalha, a 40-year-old nurse and Israeli Arab who was wounded in the explosion, said bombers don’t distinguish between Jew and Arab. “Every morning I travel with fear,” she told Israeli radio from her hospital bed. “They do not care who you are.”