Suicide Bomber Kills 5 in Tel Aviv; Arafat Besieged

For the second time in as many days, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up Thursday, this time killing five Israelis on a passenger bus here during the busy Sukkot holiday-eve lunch hour. Israel retaliated by laying siege to the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and infantry invaded Arafat’s compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah after dark Thursday. Witnesses reported fierce machine-gun battles and explosions at the compound as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem summoned his Cabinet for an emergency session and some ministers demanded that Arafat be captured and exiled.

At least two of Arafat’s bodyguards were reported wounded. Tanks took up positions in the parking lot and outside the front door of Arafat’s battered compound, where the Palestinian Authority president has been holed up almost continuously for months.

Israel said it was attempting to “isolate” Arafat and was demanding the surrender of 19 militants who it claimed had taken refuge in Arafat’s office. Early today, eight men were seen handing themselves over as Israeli bulldozers flattened trailers used by Palestinian security forces.

Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships, meanwhile, blasted their way across the northern Gaza Strip early today. Palestinians reported at least two people, a man and a woman, killed and several houses destroyed.

In Thursday’s suicide bombing, more than 70 people were injured, several critically, police said.

Along with another attack less than 24 hours earlier, it shattered a 45-day hiatus in the suicide bombings that have terrorized Israelis and again set the nation on tenterhooks. Thursday’s blast on Allenby Street, in the heart of Tel Aviv, occurred outside the city’s largest synagogue in one of Judaism’s holiest seasons.

Police said the bomber had just boarded Bus No. 4, which plies Tel Aviv’s restaurant and cafe district, when he exploded near the door. The driver was killed instantly, his charred body slumped over the steering wheel as the bus continued to roll down Allenby for half a block before stopping.

Smoke poured from the limping vehicle as passengers screamed and leaped from windows. A soldier whose arm had been torn from his body lay on a sidewalk spewed with glass, metal pieces from inside the bomb and blood. The fiery force of the blast melted garbage containers and shattered glass storefronts 200 yards away and two stories high.

The military wing of the radical Islamic movement Hamas claimed responsibility and said the bombing was part of a campaign to avenge Israel’s killing of its leader in July. Hamas leaders promised more attacks.

Carmit Ovadia, a 24-year-old secretary, stood at the bus’ back door, about to get off, when the massive explosion threw her to her knees. Everything went black around her, and pieces of glass pierced her blue denim halter top.

“All I could think about was I was going to die and I had to get off,” she recalled later in Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, her arms, legs and back pricked by shrapnel. “I know it sounds selfish, but I elbowed people to get to a door. I was being trampled. The doors were blocked. I stood on a seat and someone from outside pulled me through a window.”

Reuven Ragiv was standing on the stoop of his watch-and-jewelry store at 97 Allenby when the bus exploded before his eyes. The glass facade of his shop was chopped into jagged shards.

“All I could see of the bomber were guts, spilled guts everywhere,” said the 71-year-old Ragiv, who has owned his small store for 30 years. He said the relative tranquillity of the last six weeks was an illusion.

“It’s never going to calm down,” he said. “I’ve been in Israel for 52 years and it’s always been like this. I’ve seen five wars. The solution? The solution is to expel them all.”

Next door, at the upscale Lotus Book Store, religious burial society workers cleaned up the human blood and flesh in the shattered storefront display case.

Yaakov Heyn, who has operated the shop for 50 years, was pausing in the doorway when the blast brought a shower of glass onto his head. He was not hurt.

“Unless we find a solution between the two sides, this today is not the last time, and even if it stops for a few months, it will start again,” said Heyn, 81. “Israel has to withdraw [from Palestinian territory] and not evade this responsibility with excuses.”

Two doors away, the window of a guitar store looked as if it had been a practice target for a tank gunner. Nails and bolts added to the bomb to enhance its lethal potential punched more than a dozen holes in the glass.

In addition to taking over Arafat’s compound, Israel also imposed a blanket 24-hour curfew on the entire West Bank, home to about 2 million Palestinians. A similar measure has been in place in most cities since June, in response to an earlier wave of suicide bombings, but was being gradually relaxed in some areas.

Some Israelis argued Thursday that lifting the curfew had allowed the new attacks to be set in motion.

“The minute we opened Jenin and Nablus, and opened the road between them, we saw two suicide bombings,” Sharon’s spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said Thursday night.

Gissin said the government, in its emergency meeting, decided on “operational” moves in its “difficult and arduous campaign against the despicable terror led by” Arafat.

Gissin would not elaborate, but the operation underway in Ramallah was clearly the first step.

A senior government official said the purpose was to “isolate” Arafat, to promote those Palestinians willing to replace his leadership and to “send a clear message that we are tightening our grip.”

Israeli officials said they were also taking advantage of the moment to seize 19 Palestinians wanted on a variety of “terror” charges and who purportedly have taken refuge inside Arafat’s compound. They include Tawfiq Tirawi, the head of Palestinian intelligence.

Sharon’s government maintains that the 45 days in which no Israeli civilian was killed inside Israel were the result of tough military action.

At the same time, however, Palestinians have been engaged in a debate over the direction of their 2-year-old uprising against Israeli rule, and public opposition to violence against Israeli civilians has been growing.

Palestinians also noted that while the killings of Israelis have plummeted, an estimated 70 Palestinians were slain by Israeli forces in the last month and scores more arrested. Meanwhile, they say, Israel’s occupation of much of the West Bank and parts of the Gaza Strip continued.

Earlier Thursday, for example, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli forces in Ramallah when he broke the Israeli-imposed curfew to buy cigarettes for his father, Palestinians said.

At Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, tanks seemed to be settling into a long-term standoff with the Palestinian leadership. Israeli forces have repeatedly besieged Arafat inside his bunker during the last many months of warfare, but they have always stopped short of capturing or physically harming him.

Arafat’s spokesman, Nabil abu Rudaineh, said from inside the compound that Arafat had once again escaped injury but that the “situation is very dangerous.”