Posted on 10/21/2002 8:34:41 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for Monday's bus bombing at Karkur barely an hour after the explosion occurred.
The group's military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, issued its claim via Hezbollah's television station.
The army's initial analysis of the attack indicates that it was probably organized by the Islamic Jihad cell in Jenin. The leading figure in this cell - who currently heads Israel's list of wanted men from Islamic Jihad in the territories - is Iyad Sawalhe, lately dubbed "the engineer."
Palestinian sources say that the 30-year-old Sawalhe, from a village near Jenin, only joined Islamic Jihad during the current intifada. In the first intifada he was a Fatah activist. He was sentenced to life in an Israeli prison for the slaying of a Palestinian collaborator, but was released as part of the Oslo Accords.
Monday's attack was reminiscent of another bombing organized by Sawalhe: the attack at the Megiddo Junction on June 5, in which 17 civilians and soldiers were killed when a booby-trapped car drove up to an Egged bus and exploded.
According to a charge sheet filed in the Samaria Military Court in September against another member of Islamic Jihad's Jenin branch, Sawalhe gave the cell that committed the Megiddo bombing two barrels packed with 70 kilograms of explosives. In early September, on Rosh Hashanah eve, he allegedly tried a similar ploy, but a Border Patrol troop came across the car carrying the bomber and the explosives near Kfar Glickson, on the Green Line. The driver escaped on foot back into the West Bank, but the car was neutralized by sappers.
The Islamic Jihad in Jenin has shown signs of recovery in recent months after being badly mauled by the Israel Defense Forces during Operation Defensive Shield in April. All of the group's existing leaders were killed during that operation.
Over the last two weeks, the IDF has reduced its activities inside Jenin, mostly due to a growing number of incidents in which innocent civilians were killed or wounded. At the same time, however, the army is digging a trench around the city to prevent any car from leaving without passing through an Israeli inspection. The trench will be complete within a month.
Meanwhile, work continues on the separation fence planned to divide Israel from the West Bank, but army sources warn that it will not be finished and operational until next June. There is no way the IDF will leave Jenin until then, the sources added, because unlike in Bethlehem, there are no Palestinian security forces left in Jenin to assume responsibility for security.
No more life sentences. Only death.
Oslo part of the traitor-rapist-42 trifecta of failure: Oslo-Ireland-NoKorea.
Terrorists to die; families deported; homes flattened.
Arafat's head in a jar with a tape recorder playing, "You must be accurately when you are speaking to aaaawk!"
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