Suicide attack in Israel validates border concerns

Two groups claimed
responsibility for the attack

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

JERUSALEM — When Hamas militants toppled the imposing iron and concrete walls separating Egypt and the Gaza Strip in a pre-dawn attack two weeks ago, Israel’s military went on high alert.

It shut down the laxly patrolled road that runs along the adjacent Egyptian border, closed national parks in the area and urged tourists in the area to leave.

Monday, it became clear why: Two suicide bombers apparently from the Gaza Strip sneaked into Dimona, the southern Israeli desert town best known for housing the country’s not-so-secret nuclear program. The pair hit an outdoor mall, killing a woman and injuring at least 11 people in the first suicide attack in Israel in more than a year.

The bombing was a reminder that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, whom the Bush administration is counting on to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel, has little control over Gaza, where the uncompromising Islamic militants in Hamas run the show.

Two secular groups, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades — which is loosely allied with Abbas’ Fatah party — and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.

The president’s office rejected Al Aqsa’s claim, however, and sought to cast blame on Palestinian hard-liners opposed to peace talks. “Fatah has confirmed that the Al Aqsa Brigades has nothing to do with this attack,” Abbas’ office said.

Later in the day, Hamas leaders claimed that their followers had conducted the attack and that the pair came instead from the West Bank town of Hebron.

The attack might have been worse except that the second bomber apparently was knocked out by the force of the first blast, police said. When he came to and tried to set off his explosives amid medics tending to the wounded, police shot and killed him.

Analysts said the bombing would add to the many obstacles in the way of the peace talks.

“This is just one more complication in a series of complications,” said Hillel Frisch, a senior researcher at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. “It has the cumulative effect of deepening the impression that this peace process is pie in the sky.”

The last fatal suicide bombing in Israel was Jan. 29, 2007, when a Palestinian from Gaza crossed into the Sinai and killed three Israelis in the Red Sea resort town of Eilat. That blast was carried out by a member of Al Aqsa.

When Hamas demolished the walls that separated Egypt and Gaza two weeks ago, Israel warned that militants would try to use the chaos to smuggle weapons into Gaza and get attackers out.

Before Egypt regained control of the border Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had swept across and cleaned Egyptian towns of nearly all their supplies. The two attackers may have been among them.

Moshe Malka, a lawyer in Dimona, told Israel TV that he was working in his office near the shopping area when he heard the explosion. He grabbed a first aid kit and ran to the scene.

“On the way I saw body parts. There was a burning smell,” he said. “The wounded were lying on the ground. There were legs. I saw the head of a young man. People were calling for help.”

While tending to the wounded, Malka said, he opened the jacket of a dazed and bloody man and saw that he was wearing an explosives belt. Malka, wounded Israelis and medics scrambled away before police opened fire.