A New Jolt to Israeli Politics

JERUSALEM -- They had boarded the bus a few minutes earlier: a seventh-grader on her way to school, an 8-year-old and his grandmother, a Romanian tourist. Wading among them, a Palestinian man triggered the explosives strapped to his waist.

Instantly, a typical workaday morning was transformed into a hellish blast of fire and pain, the first suicide bombing in Jerusalem in months and one that roiled an already unsettled political panorama.

Israel vowed swift retaliation for the bombing, which killed 11 passengers and injured dozens of others on bus No. 20 as it pulled away from a stop on Mexico Street in southern Jerusalem at the height of Thursday morning’s rush hour.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon summoned his top military commanders and planned the army’s next moves. Sharon, who is embroiled in a battle for the leadership of his right-wing Likud Party, chose to exclude his rival in that contest, Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from the talks.

The radical Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, and the bomber was identified as a religiously fervent Hamas supporter from a village near Bethlehem, one of few West Bank cities not currently controlled by Israeli troops.

Early today, troops and tanks moved back into Bethlehem, as expected, and were conducting house-to-house searches. The army took up positions in Manger Square and sealed off the Church of the Nativity, traditional birthplace of Jesus, to prevent Palestinian gunmen from seeking refuge there as they did during an offensive in April.

Despite Hamas’ claim, the Israeli government blamed Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and accused him of fomenting terrorism. Arafat’s aides condemned the bombing but blamed Sharon and his “bellicose policies.”

“As long as occupation persists, there will be no security or stability for Zionists,” Abdulaziz Rantisi, a senior Hamas official, said in Gaza City. Hamas’ attack belied efforts by the Palestinian Authority and Egypt to halt such operations inside Israel at least until after the country’s elections in January.

Israel’s well-practiced trauma counselors fanned out to schools and kindergartens in Jerusalem to comfort children, while doctors at the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv worked through the day to identify the bodies.

Many of the dead were from the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ir Ganim, a couple of blocks from where the bomb exploded. The neighborhood, whose name means Garden City, is a working-class area with inexpensive housing, about a quarter of its residents recent immigrants.

The dead included Ella Sharshevsky, a recent arrival from Russia, and her 16-year-old son, Michael, and the grandmother, Kira Pearlman, and her 8-year-old grandson, Ilan, as well as two 13-year-old girls. Minutes after the explosion, anguished parents rushed from their homes above the street where it happened, desperate to find children they’d just sent off to school.

“I thought it was the end of the world,” passenger David Arouas, his face bandaged, said later at Hadassah Hospital in suburban Ein Kerem. “I felt a blow to my head, and I got up and started screaming for help.”

The bus is an enormously popular form of transportation in Israel, the wheels of choice for students, soldiers, pensioners and new immigrants -- a cross-section of Israeli society.

The attack came at a time of political upheaval in Israel. After his coalition government collapsed, Sharon late last month dissolved parliament and called new elections. Israelis will vote for a prime minister and parliament Jan. 28, their third national election in four years.

Israeli commentators spent much of Thursday debating how the morning’s bombing would hurt or benefit candidates. The conventional wisdom held that the anger spawned by yet another bombing will harden voters and push them even further to the right.

Amram Mitzna, the dovish candidate for the opposition Labor Party, was already facing an uphill struggle, and his standing was not expected to improve. The real battle is within Likud between Sharon and Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, a former prime minister, is demanding tougher action against the Palestinians, including the expulsion of Arafat. Sharon must woo Likud’s hard-line core but is constrained by Washington from taking draconian actions that would further alienate Arab nations ahead of a possible U.S. war on Iraq.

The Sharon-Netanyahu contest has already gotten nasty. This week, Netanyahu slammed Sharon for having expressed support for the eventual formation of a Palestinian state. His supporters have placed billboards saying, “Sharon will bring a terrorist state.” Drops of mock blood drip from the words.

Excluded from the emergency security talks Thursday, Netanyahu instead paid a high-profile visit to a hospital to speak to recovering victims. He took several foreign diplomats with him.

“The only way to defeat savagery, to defeat terror, is to defeat it,” Netanyahu told the ambassadors, “or it will spread to every one of your countries, every one of your cities.... We expect not only your condemnations but your united support in our fight against terror.”

While Netanyahu’s hawkish message may appeal to frightened and outraged Israelis, Sharon thus far appears to be well ahead in internal Likud polls, analysts said.

Yisrael Meir Lau, one of the Jewish state’s two chief rabbis, called on politicians to postpone the elections, saying unity over political divisiveness should be the imperative.

“The public’s heart is not in it,” he said. “Heightening the differences, deepening the gaps between right and left, north and south, religion and state -- this is not the time.”

The bomber, meanwhile, was identified as Nael abu Hilayel, a 23-year-old from the West Bank village of Khader, just southwest of Bethlehem. He came from a stridently religious family, frequently prayed at the mosque and memorized entire passages of the Koran, relatives said Thursday.

Israeli forces raided one of the family’s homes and arrested a brother and cousin of Hilayel.

His parents were receiving visitors at home in Khader and said they were proud of their son’s act.

“Thank God he sacrificed his life for the sake of Palestine,” his tearful mother, Fatima, said.

Hilayel, who worked with his father selling fruits and vegetables, dropped out of sight Wednesday after telling a sister he wanted to become a martyr.

Although scores of bombings have killed many Israelis in 26 months of fighting, Thursday’s was the first major attack in Jerusalem in nearly four months and the first suicide attack here since June 19.