|
Bomber Kills Two Others in Blast at Israel Train Station
JERUSALEM, July 16 (News Agencies) - A Palestinian bomber blew himself up near a crowded train station in Israel Monday, killing two people and wounding six others in an attack blamed on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
The blast ripped through the station in the northern Israeli town of Binyamina, and came a day after Arafat met with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for talks on the surging Middle East violence.
"The suicide attack in Binyamina shows that the Palestinian Authority has not yet decided to fight or act against terrorism," hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said at the opening ceremony of the Maccabiah games, or Jewish Olympics, in Jerusalem.
He denounced the attack as "savage," being the first bomb blast in Israel to claim Israeli lives since 21 people were killed by a suicide bomber at a Tel Aviv nightclub on June 1.
A report in the right-wing newspaper Jerusalem Post said that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that the suicide bomber himself came from the village of Burkin, west of Jenin.
The article stated that eight rather than six people were wounded in the blast.
An earlier Post article referred to sources from Sharon's office as saying that the Israeli occupation forces would retaliate swiftly and decisively in line with a recent security cabinet decision to allow Israel to escalate its assaults in the event of such an attack.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas - which was not involved in the blast - told reporters in the Gaza Strip that the Palestinian armed struggle against the Jewish state would go on.
"While Israeli aggression and Israeli killing and the Israeli siege against Palestinian people continue, our people will continue in their resistance and jihad (holy struggle) until our land is liberated," he said.
"Resistance is the only way for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli aggression and Israeli occupation," said Yassin, whose group is violently opposed to the peace process between Arafat and Israel.
But Arafat's international cooperation minister, Nabil Shaath, told the French news agency AFP: "We condemn military operations against civilians, Palestinian or Israeli. It's very bad for the peace process and only helps only the enemies of peace."
A Sharon aide told AFP that Arafat's forces were working in close cooperation with groups that are considered "radical," including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, to forge a "consortium of terror."
"There is no question that Yasser Arafat is responsible for what is going on," Dore Gold said, adding Israel had been subject to 10 similar attacks since a would-be ceasefire was declared June 13.
"Israel carefully weighs its responses with respect to timing and location, but what is clear [is] that the international community cannot expect the Jewish people to be butchered on a daily basis," he said.
Sharon has warned that Israel will now respond "on the ground" for every Palestinian attack.
Two Palestinian activists were killed early Friday when the bomb they were apparently about to plant near the Jerusalem stadium where the opening ceremony of the games was taking place exploded before it was fully prepared.
Arafat told reporters in Gaza after returning Monday from the meeting with Peres that he was pessimistic about any end to the violence, which has cost more than 650 lives since late September, mostly Palestinian.
Israeli officials have warned they have received word of a series of planned attacks by Palestinian groups.
But Palestinian preventative security chief for the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub, earlier in the day urged a halt to attacks inside Israel.
"I hope that the Palestinian political factions would have a sense of responsibility and maturity regarding actions inside Israel and that these would stop because it is not in our interests, it does not serve us," he told Voice of Palestine radio.
The Maccabiah Games had been threatened with cancellation because of security jitters, but organizers decided at the last minute to go ahead, although there is a large no-show by athletes from abroad.
Peres insisted during his meeting with Arafat that Israel demanded seven days of calm before moving forward with an international peace plan, but said speculation that it was planning to topple Arafat was "total nonsense."
Facing a right-wing outcry, Sharon joined Peres in defending the meeting, the second with Arafat in less than a month, which followed talks between the Palestinian leader and Sharon's son Omri last week as Sharon returned from his Europe trip.
Meanwhile, at the border town of Rafah - between Egypt and autonomous Palestinian territory in Gaza - an Egyptian border official reported that Israel had allowed five trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt for the Palestinians through the crossing point at Rafah, a border town divided between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
"The Israeli authorities Sunday allowed five trucks carrying 650 tons of food aid along with medical supplies to the value of 500,000 Egyptian pounds($125,000)," said the official on condition of anonymity.
The aid is supplied by the Popular Egyptian Committee of Support for the Palestinian People. It had been blocked since the end of June at Rafah, the source said.
The Israeli authorities also let 690 Palestinians, 350 of whom were headed for Gaza City, through the Rafah terminal, he said.
The same official said Israel further authorized the passage of 15 trucks carrying the luggage of Palestinian pilgrims, which had been held up since March, during the past week. Four other trucks are still awaiting Israeli permission, he added.
Rafah is a border town with one side located in Egypt, and the other in the Gaza Strip, in autonomous Palestinian territory.
|
