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Israel Vows Retaliation After Bomb Attack
JERUSALEM, March 28 (News Agencies) - Israel vowed to strike back against "terror" on Wednesday after a bomb killed two Israeli teenage boys and a suspected bomber in the latest attack since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took office three weeks ago.
The blast, the third in 24 hours, came as Arab leaders met in Amman pledging their support for the Palestinians, six months to the day since the start of the Intifada, or uprising.
Only shortly before, the United States had vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution to send U.N. observers to the Palestinian territories, triggering Arab indignation.
Sharon, who won a landslide election victory in early February pledging to restore security to Israel, has summoned his inner security cabinet for a meeting at 6:30 pm (1630 GMT), vowing to crack down against the violence.
"The situation is clear and this situation will be stopped. Israel's deterrent capacity will return to its fullest," he told reporters.
The two Israelis, identified as 15-year-old Eliran Rosenberg and 14-year-old Naphtali Landskoren, were killed in the attack at a gas station known as "Peace Rendezvous" in Neve Yamin, north of Tel Aviv and close to the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, while they were waiting for a lift to a settlement religious school.
The bombing was claimed by Ezzedine al-Qassam, the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, which is opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and has waged numerous attacks over the past few years.
"Those who are involved in these murders and bloodletting will pay the price," Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer told army radio.
Public Security Minister Uzi Landau said the Sharon government, which has so far opted for restraint, would act soon to confront the anti-Israeli attacks.
The Neve Yamin bomb blast came a day after two attacks in Jerusalem that killed the bomber and left around 30 people injured, despite heightened security across the country.
Tensions were also running high in the West Bank town of Hebron, where Jewish settlers torched Palestinian cars and shops in apparent revenge attacks for the killing two days ago of a 10-month-old child.
And around 4,000 Palestinians joined the funeral of an 11-year-old boy shot dead a day earlier by Israeli troops near the village of Dura, southwest of Hebron.
Also in the West Bank, a 60-year-old woman died of asphyxiation after Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at her home near Jenin while hunting down an activist from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
A Palestinian boy was killed and four other children wounded when an unexploded Israeli shell they were handling went off in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses and medical sources said.
Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo urged the international community to intervene to end the deadly spiral of violence but warned that the Palestinians could not make peace with the "bloodthirsty warmongers" in Sharon's government.
"The world has to intervene to put an end to this war, which Israel is trying to inflame and which will burn everyone," Abed Rabbo told AFP in Gaza City, saying Israel must shoulder the blame for deaths on both sides.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the leading dove in the Sharon government, urged Israel to resume dialogue with the Palestinians in a bid to staunch the bloodshed.
"Israel must try to renew the dialogue with the Palestinians to seek a ceasefire. Violence must cease," he told army radio.
Sharon's security adviser Ehud Yatom said the premier had adopted a "policy of restraint" because of the Arab summit in Amman and ahead of Land Day on Friday, an event that has frequently deteriorated into clashes.
Land Day commemorates the killing of six Arab Israelis by Israeli soldiers in protests in 1976 over the confiscation of land from Arab communities in northern Israel.
Palestinians suffered a blow late Tuesday when the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution to send U.N. observers to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a move welcomed by Israel.
"I trust that it will not affect our relations with our Arab friends," the acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, James Cunningham, told reporters after casting the first U.S. veto in four years.
But the Palestinian observer to the U.N., Nasser Al-Kidwa, said the veto would provoke a negative reaction in Arab countries and "undermine the credibility" of the U.S. role as broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In Amman, Arab leaders expressed "deep regret" over the U.S. veto after rallying behind Arafat, who on Tuesday accused Israel of plotting to "kill the peace process."
Even U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, attending the summit as an observer, added his voice to the condemnation of Israel's heavy handedness with the Palestinians.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose country turned against the Palestinians after they concluded separate peace accords with Israel in 1993, offered to bury the hatchet with Arafat and branded Israelis as "more racist than the Nazis."
Arafat will make a historic visit to Syria in mid-April, Palestinian international cooperation minister Nabil Shaath told AFP.
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