Posted on 09/09/2001 10:24:35 AM PDT by DCBryan1
Seven Dead in Frenzy of Middle East Violence
By Christine Hauser
NAHARIYA, Israel (Reuters) - A Palestinian suicide bombing, car bomb explosions at a major Israeli intersection and a West Bank shooting killed seven people Sunday in a frenzy of violence that threatened efforts to convene truce talks.
Deadly events unfolded by the hour and Israel retaliated with helicopter missile strikes in West Bank cities, hitting two empty offices of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) faction near Ramallah and a government building in Jericho.
The Palestinian Authority (news - web sites) rejected Israeli allegations that it was responsible for the violence and issued a statement condemning all attacks on civilians and the missile strikes.
The start of the Israeli work week began with a Palestinian ambush of a van ferrying teachers to a school in a Jewish settlement in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. A female teacher and the driver were killed in the shooting.
Some two hours later, a suicide bomber killed himself and three other people at a train station in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya. Some 35 people were wounded, Israeli officials said.
``He simply ran and exploded,'' Yaakov Borovsky, Israel's northern police chief told reporters, describing the seconds after a police officer challenged the bomber and asked him for identification.
The station was crowded with soldiers returning from weekend leave.
Three hours after the Nahariya blast, two car bombs exploded next to an empty Israeli bus at the busy Beit Lid junction, near the central city of Netanya. One person, who police said was apparently a bomber, was killed. The bus went up in flames.
Dozens of soldiers gather at Beit Lid on Sundays to await transportation back to their bases in the West Bank and elsewhere. In 1995, 21 people were killed at the intersection when two Palestinian suicide bombers blew themselves up.
Overnight in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites), Israeli forces killed a Palestinian guerrilla and wounded another during an attempt to slip into Israel.
SHARON SPOKESMAN ACCUSES ARAFAT
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) accused Yasser Arafat of instigating the attacks during preparations for talks between the Palestinian leader and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
``This shows that while Arafat is talking about conducting negotiations and returning to the peace process...he's providing the support and the instigation for continuous terrorist activity,'' spokesman Raanan Gissin told Reuters.
``What should they talk about? The man doesn't want to talk -- he wants to shoot,'' Gissin said of Arafat, adding that Israel would draw ``the proper conclusions.''
The Palestinian Authority said in its statement it ``rejects completely Israeli allegations that the Palestinian Authority is responsible for what happened today.''
The Palestinian leadership ``condemns all operations that target Israeli and Palestinian civilians,'' it added.
Peres said Friday he and Arafat planned to meet this week and hold two follow-up sessions to try to agree a truce in nearly a year of fighting since a Palestinian uprising erupted last September after peace talks stalled.
Arafat's adviser, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said the Palestinians would give their final response on holding talks with Peres after an Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo Sunday.
Some 559 Palestinians and 163 Israelis have been killed in the bloodletting.
A decision on whether to go ahead with the Peres-Arafat meeting could be taken at a meeting later Sunday of Sharon's security cabinet.
MILITANTS CLAIM REPONSIBILITY
The Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas, claimed responsibility for the Nahariya bombing, according to al-Jazeera satellite television, which broadcasts from Qatar.
``We do not trust any negotiations. The only option for our people is resistance,'' Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior Hamas official, told al-Manar, the television station of the Hizbollah organization in Lebanon, by telephone from Gaza.
Islamic Jihad said its gunmen attacked the van in the Jordan Valley. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Beit Lid blasts.
The Nahariya attack was the second suicide bombing against Israelis in less than a week. Tuesday, a Palestinian disguised as an Orthodox Jew blew himself up in Jerusalem, wounding 15 people.
The coastal city of Nahariya is on Israel's border with Lebanon and was a target of Hizbollah rocket attacks before Israel's military withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000.
``I heard a huge boom, and as a resident of Nahariya, I can tell you that Katyushas have fallen here, but never has there been such a loud explosion,'' a witness told Israel Radio.
A body lay crumpled outside shattered shops lining the bloodstained train platform. A severed finger was blown under the tire of car on the other side of the tracks.
Police said the bomb, carried by the bomber in a rucksack, was packed with nails for more deadly effect.
``People ran in every direction, frightened and hysterial,'' a witness told Army Radio from her hospital bed.
What, no moral defense of what these suicide bombers did???
No, Zionist are Nazi's retort???
No, gave back all the "stolen land" from 1948 and the middle east will be a paridise???
Your blood thirsty brothers aren't making it easy for you to defend them, are they???
Thanks for your contribution. Your humanitarian attitudes are noteworthy. I'll remember them the next time an Israeli strike takes out some "innocent" Palestinians.
You forget the Zionist racist part........
< / sarcasm >
The Arabs chose violence and found the Jews more than able to respond. The real tragedy is they stick to the methods that got them where they are. And I don't mean negotiation.
If anything, the Hebron Massacre and the Jerusalem riots that occured numerous times the following decade only reinforced the need for the Jews to attain their own political destiny. What is happening today is only an extension of the violence that the extremist religious Islamics started long before Israel even existed, a bitter religious bigotry that Islam foments that requires all non-believers to be dhimmis at best, dead at worst.
Nevertheless, statistics matter not anymore. The 600,000 Jews there had a right to self-determination, especially in light of all the violence against them. By your comment do you mean to imply that the 6 million Jews living there now should pack up and leave? Nonsense. Bear in mind that there was supposed to be a Palestinian state alongside Israel... it was swallowed whole by Jordan and Egypt in 1948. Not until 1967 did Israel liberate this territory and give hope to Palestinian national aspirations.
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