Israel Lays Blame on Syria for Bombing

Israel on Saturday declared that Syria was responsible for a Palestinian suicide attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub that killed four Israelis, wounded dozens and threatened to taint the conciliatory atmosphere that has taken hold since the death of Yasser Arafat.

Although issuing no warning of imminent action against Syria, Israeli security officials suggested that a campaign of assassinations could resume against senior members of Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian militant group whose Syria-based leadership claimed responsibility Saturday for the previous night’s attack.

“Israel sees Syria and the Islamic Jihad movement as those standing behind the murderous attack in Tel Aviv,” Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz’s office said after a late-night meeting of senior security officials.

Israeli government officials said a planned military pullback from five West Bank cities and towns was on hold while Israel assessed security efforts by the Palestinians.

Acting separately, Israeli and Palestinian authorities made a total of seven arrests Saturday in connection with the bombing, the first of its kind in nearly four months, security officials on both sides said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas blamed an outside entity for the attack, which targeted Israelis waiting to enter a popular karaoke bar called Stage on Tel Aviv’s seafront promenade.

“There is a third party that wants to sabotage this process,” Abbas told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, but did not name a specific group or government. “This act harms our interests, our path and our goals, and we will not hesitate for a minute to track them down, bring them to justice and punish them.”

In a break with common practice during the Arafat era, Abbas issued a swift and unequivocal condemnation of the bombing, which struck a sharp blow to Israelis’ hope that the suicide attacks could be coming to an end. The powerful blast, set off among revelers arriving at the nightclub shortly before midnight, sprayed the street with shrapnel, shards of debris and body parts.

The attack was also condemned by the Bush administration, which said it had been in touch with the Palestinian leadership “to urge immediate and credible action by Palestinian security authorities, in cooperation with the government of Israel, to determine who is behind this terrorist act and to bring them to justice.”

Syrian officials denied Saturday that their country was behind the bombing, Associated Press reported.

Despite the claim of responsibility by Damascus-based Islamic Jihad, Israeli officials and analysts also voiced strong suspicions that another Syrian-linked organization may have been involved: the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah.

“We are well aware that Islamic Jihad has taken responsibility, but I can only say that we know that over the recent period of time, Hezbollah has been actively trying to do something like this,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.

A senior Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators were investigating Hezbollah links to the attacker, who was identified by Palestinian authorities as Abdullah Badran, a 21-year-old Palestinian university student from a village in the northern West Bank.

The bombing set off a highly unusual round of denials and finger pointing among Palestinian militant groups.

A senior leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the West Bank said a well-known Hezbollah operative, Kais Obeid, had been trying to recruit militants to carry out an attack, offering them cash. Obeid also tried to get Al Aqsa to claim responsibility once the attack had been carried out, the leader said.

Militant groups often rushed to boast of inflicting casualties on Israelis. But in Friday’s attack, Islamic Jihad took nearly a day to make a definitive claim of responsibility.

Even if their anti-Israel ideology has not changed, militant organizations based in the Palestinian territories have strong pragmatic motives for observing a truce, at least for the time being.

Until recently, Israeli troops aggressively hunted down the known leaders of the major militant organizations. A return to the practice of what the Israelis term “targeted killings,” even if aimed only at Islamic Jihad, could lead to a general unraveling of the cease-fire.

As they weigh their options, the militant groups are also mindful of public opinion. Among Palestinians, popular support for a violent struggle against Israel has fallen off sharply after more than four years of unrelenting conflict, which has yielded no tangible political gains.

Recent polls have suggested that most Palestinians want to give Abbas a chance to extract concessions from Israel that will ease the hardships of their daily lives.

While expressing mistrust of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the militant groups are searching for a place in the new Palestinian political order. Hamas in particular is eager to claim policymaking clout commensurate with its popularity.

Talks among the Palestinian factions aimed at formalizing a cease-fire were still expected to take place in Cairo next weekend, several participants said. But Israel will not allow Islamic Jihad representatives from the Palestinian territories to attend the meeting, according to Israeli media reports, casting a pall over prospects for cementing any accord.

After scores of suicide attacks over the course the conflict, televised scenes from Friday’s bombing were all too familiar to Israelis: dazed and bleeding victims calling out to loved ones, the frantic search by volunteers for tiny scraps of flesh for religious burial. But some elements marked a sharp break from the past.

When Arafat was the Palestinian leader, Israel, which believed him to be complicit in many such attacks, generally responded to suicide bombings with swift and fierce raids in the West Bank or Gaza.

This time, Israel has offered assurances it wants to continue a dialogue with the Palestinian leadership.

“We haven’t given up on Mahmoud Abbas or the new Palestinian government, and I think the restrained Israeli response to this terrible attack indicates our desire to give this process every chance,” said Regev, the Foreign Ministry spokesman.

The attack, however, laid bare a fundamental philosophical dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

Abbas has sought to co-opt the militant groups rather than confront them; Israel insists that they be disarmed and dismantled.

“This time, words are not enough. He has to combat terrorism,” Cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister, told Army Radio.

The attack also highlighted disagreements between Israel and the Palestinians over who should control security in West Bank population centers. That dispute could deepen with the Israeli troop pullback on hold in the wake of the bombing.

One of the towns on the list of those to be turned over to Palestinian control was Tulkarm, the nearest large community to the village of Deir al Ghusun, the bomber’s home.

Badran, the bomber, was reported to have had a loose affiliation with several militant groups. He left a videotape accusing Abbas’ government of acting “according to American interests.”

Israeli troops arrested five of Badran’s relatives and associates Saturday and handed them over to Shin Bet, the domestic security agency, for questioning, military sources said.

In another departure from the past, the Israelis made no move to demolish his family’s home. The military announced two weeks ago that it would halt the controversial practice.

Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef said Saturday that the Palestinians had made two arrests, but gave no details.

Israel has repeatedly demanded that Syria stop harboring leaders of Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and has long denounced Damascus’ patronage of the Lebanon-based guerrillas of Hezbollah, which also receive backing from Iran.

“Israel has never been reluctant to attack Hezbollah, even within Syria itself,” said Boaz Ganor, an Israeli counter-terrorism expert. “If it is clear-cut that Hezbollah is responsible, I would not exclude any possibilities regarding retaliation.”

An Israeli military strike aimed either at Hezbollah or Syria would add a volatile new dimension to the regional interplay just weeks after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Ganor said he believed Syria might be hoping to provoke Israel into a confrontation with Hezbollah on Lebanese soil, because that could provide Damascus with a pretext for keeping troops in Lebanon as many Lebanese and world leaders are demanding they leave.

Israeli intelligence officials have been warning that Hezbollah, angered by increasingly cordial dealings between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, has intensified its efforts to inspire and fund attacks. Its activities have included attempts to recruit members of existing Palestinian militant groups, intelligence officials said in closed-door briefings to Israeli lawmakers.

Since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon nearly five years ago, the guerrillas of Hezbollah have engaged in sporadic border clashes with Israeli troops.

But analysts said they believed an Israeli strike against the group in retaliation for Friday’s bombing could have a snowball effect.

“It could all be very destabilizing,” Ganor said, pointing to Hezbollah’s large arsenal of rockets capable of striking cities in northern Israel.

In the aftermath of the Tel Aviv bombing, a tense calm prevailed in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Israeli police and soldiers were on high alert against another attack.

In the West Bank town of Hebron, however, a young Palestinian woman tried to stab an Israeli border policeman at a checkpoint near the biblical Tomb of the Patriarchs, the Israeli military said.

Troops pursued her, first firing warning shots, then shooting her, a military spokesman said.

The woman, seriously wounded, was seized by troops and evacuated to a hospital in Israel. The border policeman she tried to stab was not injured.