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September 3, 2004/Elul 17 5763, Vol. 55, No. 50
Bombs shock Beersheba
DINA KRAFT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
The thick clouds of smoke billowing around two bombed buses in Beersheba symbolized how the sense of calm that had settled over Israel this spring and summer could end in a single jolt.
At least 16 people died and nearly 100 were injured in two near-simultaneous explosions Aug. 31 in the southern Israeli city. Hamas claimed responsibility.
"I heard a blast and I started to run to the site. Within seconds there was another explosion," said Gil Yehezekel, owner of a business close to the location of the attack, according to Ha'aretz.
"When I got there, there were people on the floor, wounded people, limbs torn off," he said. "The police and ambulances arrived in seconds."
Thousands of joyful Palestinians in the Gaza Strip took to the streets after the bombings, throwing sweets in the air and singing songs to celebrate the carnage.
On Sept. 1, the Israeli army's chief of staff vowed that Israel would "take care of those who support terror," singling out the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Hezbollah.
"I don't want to get into the question of what we will do, but everyone who is responsible for terrorism against us will not sleep soundly," Maj. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said.
Following the attack, Hebron was placed under closure and Israel Defense Forces soldiers arrested 12 Palestinians overnight. Troops also raided the bombers' homes.
Security forces also were to bolster the seam line between the southern Hebron Hills and the Negev, the area where the bombers apparently crossed into Israel.
Israel also imposed a full closure on the Gaza Strip in the wake of an attempt Aug. 31 by a Palestinian to enter the Erez Crossing with a bomb sewn into his underwear.
Though suicide bombers constantly try to attack Israel, the West Bank security barrier and the efforts of Israeli security forces had foiled every attack in the past six months.
But that lull was only an illusion, Israeli officials and analysts say. The strength of terrorist groups like Hamas may have been temporarily sapped by the Israeli assassinations of its leaders, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdul Aziz Rantissi, but their moti-vation to carry out attacks continues to grow.
"The so-called lull was no lull before. The Palestinian terrorists even during the past six months continued to try every opportunity to strike at Israelis in the hearts of our cities, on our buses and in our cafes," said David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office.
Meanwhile, Sharon said, "the fight against terror will continue with full strength," and pledged to stay with his plan for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four northern West Bank settlements by next year.
On Aug. 31, Sharon presented his Likud Party's Knesset faction with a timetable for the with-drawal and tried to quash suspicions that his plan would increase terrorist attacks in Israel.
"There is no connection between (the bombings) and our plan for disengagement," a somber Sharon told reporters. "We will fight the murderousness of Palestinian terrorists with all our might."
Baker credits Israel's security fence and army operations for thwarting most of the recent attempts at attacks.
But others question how effective the fence can be as long as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians remains unresolved.
"The fence can actually increase motivation for attacks because there is motivation on two levels. One is ideological, by the militant groups like Hamas who do not want to live in peace with Israel.
"The second is that in the past four years especially, the effects of Israel's actions in its war against terror often hurt not just terrorists but the people who simply live there," said Yoram Meital, chairman of the Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben Gurion University.
"The bottom line is that the motivation for attacks is one of the main things we need to pay attention to, and the fence does not decrease motivation," he said. "Israel is in a struggle against Hamas and Islamic Jihad but also against the Palestinian Authority, (and its people) have little motivation to stop terrorists."
Meanwhile, there are indications that since Israel took out the Hamas leader-ship, the group's cells are working more secretly and independently of one another, increasing their ability to carry out attacks like the one in Beersheba.
There is still no security fence separating Israel from the West Bank near Hebron. David Newman, an expert on political geography and borders at Ben Gurion University, said this might lead some to conclude that a fence in the area would have prevented an attack.
Indeed, Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told reporters after the attack, "where a fence exists, there is no terror; where there is no fence, there is terror."
But Newman said that to "think the fence will hermetically seal off any fanatical terror bomber - that is a bit of a panacea."
According to Newman, despite Israel's expert intelligence network and apparent ability to stop most terrorists, there will always be those that are going to get through because of the reality of life in Palestinian areas.
"You have tens of thousands of people in the occupied territories whose economic situation is worse than in 1967 and they see this as a direct result of the political situation, and blame Israel," he said.
"They have become more radicalized and have been taken with Hamas, and have less belief in the Palestinian Authority and (its president, Yasser Arafat)," Newman said.
Some have suggested that with a unilateral with-drawal from the Gaza Strip looming, militant and mainstream Palestinian political elements are wary.
"There is joint interest by those in the Arafat camp of the Palestinian Authority who have a great interest in not having a unilateral withdrawal of Gaza by Israel," and Hamas, Lt. Col. Yohanan Soref, the former head of the army's civilian administration in Gaza, told Israel Television.
Gila Finkelstein, a legi-slator from the National Religious Party, said the disengagement plan is only providing Palestinians with greater motivation to carry out terror attacks.
"The Palestinians will use everything they can to prove to the entire world that disengagement is a direct product of the deadly terror attacks, and the Gaza Strip is only the beginning," she said.
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