Child’s Slaying Stokes New Fears in Israel

JERUSALEM -- It wasn’t the kind of large-scale, well-organized attack that captures international headlines and derails peace talks. But for many Israelis, the Palestinian ambush that killed a 7-year-old girl in her family car was just as troubling -- and nearly as dire in its implications for the prospects for long-term peace.

On Tuesday, at close to midnight on a lonely stretch of toll road that runs inside Israel proper but skirts the West Bank, a gunman fired from close range at a car carrying the Leibowitz family home from a bar mitzvah in Jerusalem. Noam, 7, riding in the back seat, was fatally hit; her 3-year-old sister, Shira, was wounded.

The gunman and an accomplice then escaped back into the West Bank, Israeli authorities said.

This was an example of the kind of low-level violence that many Israelis fear will persist during the quest for a peace accord, even if Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is able to negotiate a temporary truce with militant groups such as Hamas.

In another such attack, a suicide bomber struck early today in a tiny farming community in Israel, near the boundary with the northern West Bank, killing himself and a grocery store owner.

Abbas held talks for a second day with Hamas representatives in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, but no progress was reported.

Israeli news accounts said today that Hamas had held out the idea of limiting itself to “small” attacks.

On highways in the West Bank, roadside shootings targeting Jewish settlers have become commonplace over the last 33 months of violence. But such attacks are rare inside Israel itself, and the one targeting the Leibowitz family generated a sense of vulnerability among ordinary Israelis, who already feel at risk of suicide bombings when they congregate in cafes and shopping malls or board buses.

Wednesday brought a national outpouring of anger over the ambush, infused with grief over the death of another child in a conflict that has already claimed the lives, on both sides, of so many of the very young. An announcer on Israel Radio’s main evening newsmagazine lost his composure and began crying after hearing an audio clip of a eulogy to Noam, delivered by an 8-year-old playmate named Adi Levy.

“We played all kinds of games together, and played with Barbie dolls,” Adi said in a clear, piping voice at her friend’s funeral in the northern port city of Haifa. “I cried when I saw her car on TV and her little sister in the hospital.”

Palestinian officials expressed sympathy but also pointed out that a 7-year-old Palestinian girl had been among the dozen civilian bystanders killed last week in Gaza City when Israel unleashed a series of missile strikes at Hamas leaders.

Israel was quick to respond to the shooting. A tight curfew was imposed in the town of Kalkilya, in the northern West Bank, close to the scene of the ambush. All day Wednesday, Israeli troops conducted searches, but no arrests were made. If people ventured out to try to shop or run errands, Israeli patrols with loudspeakers yelled at them in Arabic, “Go back inside!”

“We just hope that the curfew will be lifted so that students can take their final exams tomorrow,” said the town’s governor, Mustafa Malki.

Authorities said the gunman, apparently aided by an accomplice, had penetrated a protective barrier that separates the highway from the West Bank by cutting through heavy metal bars across a drainage tunnel that runs beneath it.

Israeli officials said the attack underscored the need to disarm all Palestinian extremist groups before the peace plan, known as the “road map,” could move forward. “This is part of the daily drain on the people of Israel that terrorism is causing,” said Dore Gold, an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Two Palestinian militant organizations -- the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, and the General Command, a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- circulated unofficial claims of responsibility for the slaying.

Israeli officials say they are worried that even if a cease-fire with Hamas and other groups is achieved, offshoots will continue to carry out attacks, acting on behalf of the larger organizations that had agreed to truce terms.

The Bush administration has been working to shore up the peace plan, which was inaugurated two weeks ago at a summit in Aqaba, Jordan.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is planning to travel to Israel and probably the Palestinian territories Friday, and U.S. envoy John Wolf has been holding consultations with both sides. A team of monitors from the State Department and the CIA arrived over the weekend.

Powell expressed confidence that both Israel and the Palestinians were trying to move beyond the spate of violence, including a bus bombing and the Israeli strikes against Hamas in Gaza, which killed more than 50 people last week. The continuing bloodshed threatens to scuttle the peace plan even before the first meaningful steps toward its implementation have taken place.

“I am encouraged that both sides seem to realize that they cannot allow this immediate wave of terrorism to stand in the way of progress down the road map,” Powell told reporters in Cambodia, where he is attending an Asian summit. “There is no alternative.”

In language that increasingly reflects Israel’s position, Powell also said the goal of Abbas and his government should not be merely a cease-fire with such groups as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also the dismantling of all extremist groups and militias.

“As [the Palestinians] increase their capacity, I think they can do more than just perhaps seek a cease-fire with some of the militant groups, those who’ve sponsored terrorist activities, but can begin the process of removing their capacity to undertake such terrorist activities,” Powell told reporters.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report from Phnom Penh, Cambodia.