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Israel suicide bombings kill 25

Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM -- Two suicide bombings that killed 25 people and wounded almost 80 yesterday threw Prime Minister Shimon Peres' Labor Party on the defensive in an already bitter election battle with the rival Likud Party.

The political fallout from the attacks began even before ultra-Orthodox members of the burial society had finished collecting the victims' remains from a busy Jerusalem street and a soldiers' hitchhiking station in Ashkelon, on the Mediterranean coast eight miles north of the Palestinian Gaza area.

Surveying the grisly scene of the Jerusalem attack, a heavily guarded Peres was booed and jeered by an angry crowd. "Peres go home!" they shouted, and "Peres is next!" -- a chilling reference to the last prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who was slain Nov. 4 by a right-wing Jew who said he wanted to stop Rabin's peacemaking efforts.

Islamic militants claimed responsibility for yesterday's attacks, saying they were carried out to avenge the killing Jan. 5 of Yehiya Ayash -- a master bomb-maker known as "The Engineer" -- presumably by Israeli agents. Ayash, believed to have manufactured seven bombs used in suicide attacks on Israelis, died when a booby-trapped cellular phone exploded in his hand.

Last night, hundreds gathered at the bombing sites in Jerusalem and Ashkelon, reciting prayers for the dead, lighting memorial candles and weeping.

Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Peres' chief rival in the race for the prime minister's job, said he would make no political comment on a day when the nation was plunged into mourning.

"This is a day of unity of the ranks, and that's what we'll do," Netanyahu told reporters as he met with Likud leaders.

But his partner, former Army Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, minced no words.

"It's an illusion that the Palestinians will collaborate with us (to stop bombings)," said Eitan, leader of the far-right Tsomet Party, which recently teamed with Likud for parliamentary elections on May 29. "They are all dancing on the blood. The peace process only weakens us."

The bombings, carried out during the Sunday-morning rush hour as the nation returned to work after the Sabbath, claimed more lives than any single attack on Israelis since the government signed a peace deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization in September 1993. As in the past, the bombers chose targets likely to be crowded with soldiers returning to their bases after weekend leave.

In Ashkelon, police said they believe the attacker carried his bomb in a bag and wore an army uniform. He is believed to have mingled with the soldiers before detonating the explosives.

Twenty-three people, including the bomber, were killed in Jerusalem, and 50 were injured, more than a dozen critically. In Ashkelon, two were killed, including the bomber, and 29 injured. Among the dead in Jerusalem were two American students, identified as Mattityahu Eisenfeld, 25, of Hartford, Conn., and his girlfriend Sarah Duker, in her 20s, of Teaneck, N.J. In Washington, President Clinton condemned the attacks, saying, "These brutal acts of terror ... offend the conscience of the world. They must be condemned. They must be brought to an end."

PLO Chairman and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat called the bombings "a crime, not only against innocent people but the peace process in its entirety." His adviser, Nabil abu Rudaineh, told Voice of Palestine Radio that Arafat called Peres to offer his condolences to the families.

Police said the 22-pound bomb carried onto the No. 18 bus in Jerusalem was packed with nails and ball bearings to make it more deadly when it exploded. The force of the explosion ripped the roof off the bus, and some body parts were found in the limbs of nearby trees.

Hamas officials reported yesterday that Palestinian police began arresting members of Iziddin al-Qassam in Gaza after the bombings. Israeli security officials said they believe one of the bombers was from Gaza and the other from Hebron, a West Bank town still under Israel's control.

Israelis on the right and left of the political spectrum said yesterday that the bombings would probably hurt Labor and Peres in the upcoming election.

"I'm afraid it will," said Boaz Hadas, a 26-year-old Hebrew University student who voted for the left-wing Meretz Party in the last elections and is unsure whom to support this time.

Standing at a bus stop, Hadas said that no Jerusalemite could help but be shaken by the ferocity of the attack.

"My wife takes the No. 18 every day," he said. "I've been thinking all morning of my friends, thinking about which of them might have been on this bus. It creates a bad atmosphere toward the government. I heard people shouting things about Shimon Peres this morning that we haven't heard since Rabin was killed."

Peres had worked hard to avoid just the sort of bloody spectacle that filled Israeli television screens and dominated state-run radio all day yesterday.

In recent meetings with Arafat, Peres said, he has urged a crackdown on Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad, and has provided specific information from Israel's intelligence services on would-be attackers.

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Political sources said the prime minister had repeatedly emphasized to his own aides his fears of the political damage a terrorist attack could do to him and to Labor. Housing Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer went so far as to suggest several weeks ago that the government simply ban Palestinians from entering Israel until after the elections, and pay compensation to the Palestinian Authority for lost wages during that period.

The idea was hooted down at the time by other party officials. But one of Peres' first moves Sunday, in the wake of the double bombings, was to place a ban on the more than 50,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank who cross daily into Israel to work.

The army had lifted an 11-day closure Friday morning that it said was imposed because an attack was expected. About 30,000 workers who had gone to jobs inside Israel on Sunday morning began flooding back into the West Bank and Gaza as soon as the bombings were reported.