Israel Says It Foiled Anti-Arab Plot

Israeli security forces, already battling attacks by Palestinian militants on Jewish civilians, said over the weekend that they foiled an attempt by radical Jewish settlers to detonate a powerful bomb at a school for Arab girls in East Jerusalem.

Investigators were said to be questioning four suspects to determine whether they were responsible for any recent attacks against Palestinians, including a bombing in March at another school in East Jerusalem.

Authorities fear that attacks on Palestinians by Jewish extremists could lead to reprisals--and a never-ending cycle of violence.

“It’s a miracle that the bomb didn’t go off,” said Ehud Sprinzak, a political scientist at the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya and an expert on right-wing extremism. “The Palestinians are already [enraged] because of the recent incursions by the Israeli military into their territories. They don’t need more incentives to be inflamed and bring out more violence.”

Police arrested the men two weeks ago, but details of their arrest and alleged plot were revealed to Israeli media only over the weekend.

The bomb was rigged to explode when the 1,500 students in the At Tur neighborhood gathered for morning assembly in the school’s courtyard, authorities said. The device was composed of two barrels of gasoline and two gas balloons.

Agents with Israel’s Shin Bet secret service, who were questioning the suspects, acknowledged that they knew nothing of the apparent plot until police noticed the Jewish men acting suspiciously in the Arab neighborhood just before dawn April 29.

Police said the men were in a car pulling a small trailer. When the vehicle stopped near the school, officers approached the men, who said they were fixing a flat tire. Police arrested the suspects after they refused to identify themselves. Officers also seized some unlicensed weapons from their car.

In March, a bomb attack on an Arab school in East Jerusalem injured a teacher and several students. A group identifying itself as “Revenge of the Infants” claimed responsibility for that bombing, saying it was avenging the killing of Jewish children by Palestinian militants. A few days earlier, six Israeli children were killed in a suicide bombing outside a Jerusalem synagogue.

Israeli human rights groups say Jewish vigilantism has been responsible for the deaths of about a dozen Palestinians, a small percentage of the more than 1,600 Palestinians killed since their uprising for independence began more than 19 months ago.

About 450 Jews have been killed during the same period by Palestinian militants who have increasingly targeted civilians inside Israel. Only Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a pool hall, killing 15 civilians.

That bombing caused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to order a military offensive against the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip, where the suicide bomber is believed to have been based. But Sunday, Israel began sending home some reservists who had been called up for the operation, saying it was canceling the planned incursion for the time being.

Sprinzak, the expert on political extremists, said the four suspects appeared to belong to a loose-knit group of radicals--not the religious groups who openly advocate revenge against Palestinians.

“They are simply driven by their hate for Arabs,” he said.

Menachem Landau, a former senior officer in the Israeli secret service, agreed.

“They just set themselves a target and try to hit it,” Landau told Israel Radio. “This is revenge, spontaneous revenge.”