MIDDLE EAST: Israel yesterday laid to rest the four young victims of a Palestinian suicide bombing outside Tel Aviv on Thursday afternoon, the first in almost three months, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem
The four - three 19-year-old women, two of them soldiers, and a 22-year-old male soldier - were killed at a bus stop on a major road in the Tel Aviv suburbs by an 18-year-old bomber from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The PFLP is threatening further attacks in what it says is revenge for the killings of two of its gunmen by Israeli troops in Nablus last week.
Israel is now indicating that it may carry out a new series of attacks on alleged Intifada kingpins from the PFLP and Islamic Jihad, two Palestinian extremist groups that have been resisting calls for an end to suicide bombings.
Israeli security officials said yesterday that leaders of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement responsible for innumerable suicide bombings over the past three years, would not be targeted because, they said, it has taken a formal decision to refrain from further suicide bombings inside sovereign Israel.
Thursday's blast was the first suicide bombing in Israel since October, when a Palestinian woman blew up the Jewish-Arab Maxim restaurant on the outskirts of Haifa, killing more than 20 people.
But Israeli officials say the lull was illusory, and more than 20 bombings had been thwarted since then.
Officials added that, as of yesterday afternoon, they were facing some 50 separate intelligence warnings of further planned attacks.
Thursday's bombing came just minutes after Israeli assault helicopters fired missiles at a car in the Gaza Strip, killing the intended target, the Islamic Jihad Gaza commander, Makled Hamed, two other Islamic Jihad members and two passers-by.
The Israeli Defence Minister, Mr Shaul Mofaz, said Hamed had been planning "a mega-attack" in the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza strike ended a period of some two months during which Israel had not carried out "targeted strikes" of alleged orchestrators of bombings.
In the wake of Thursday's suicide bombing, Israel has closed all crossings from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Officials close to the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, said that if the Palestinian Authority did not begin acting against the extremist groups, Mr Sharon would revert to what they are now calling his "default" position, implementing the "Disengagement Plan" he announced in an address last week.
Under this Israel would unilaterally withdraw from an unspecified portion of the West Bank, dismantling settlements as it goes, but ultimately leaving the Palestinians with less territory than Mr Sharon says he would be prepared to relinquish at the peace table.
Palestine Authority officials yesterday condemned both the Tel Aviv suicide bombing and the Israeli raid and called for a return to the "road map" peace framework.
In other violence yesterday an Israeli civilian was shot and badly hurt by soldiers during a demonstration against Israel's West Bank security barrier. In what was a joint protest by a group known as Anarchists Against the Wall and the International Solidarity Movement, one other demonstrator was slightly injured.
Military sources claimed that the badly injured man, a kibbutz member, was in a group trying to cut through the fencing. Other demonstrators insisted that at no time were soldiers' lives in danger and that there was no justification for a resort to live fire.
"We began cutting the fence and shaking it. The Israeli army was waiting for us and shot live bullets directly at us," one of the Israeli protesters, who described themselves as anarchists, said.
- (Additional reporting Reuters)