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February 23, 2003
Jerusalem suicide bomber kills eight
By Etgar Lefkovitz and Herb Keinon
A Palestinian suicide bomber wearing a bag of explosives on his back boarded a crowded Jerusalem No. 14A bus Sunday morning and blew himself up, murdering eight people and wounding more than 60 others. It was the second bus bombing in the capital in just over three weeks.
The attack, which was also the 110th Palestinian suicide bombing in the last three-and-a-half years of violence, occurred a day before the International Court of Justice at The Hague was to begin hearings on the controversial security fence Israel is building to prevent suicide bombers from entering the country.
Five of the eight killed in the attack were identified as Lior Azulai, 18, a senior at Jerusalem’s Gymnasia Rehavia high school, St.-Sgt. Natanel Havshush, 20, Benayahu Jonathan Zuckerman, 18, a senior at Jerusalem’s Experimental High School, Yuval Ozana, 32, of Jerusalem, and Yehuda Haim, 47, of Jerusalem, the brother-in-law of Israel’s consul-general to The Hague.
Another victim is Yafe Ben-Shimon, while the identities of the two other victims were not yet released, pending notification of next of kin.
The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the morning rush-hour attack, and identified the bomber as Muhammad Za’al, 23, from the village of Husan near Bethlehem.
The previous suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem last month was also carried out by the same group, with the bomber also coming from the Bethlehem area.
Israel’s reaction to the attack will be to speed up construction of the anti-terrorist fence around the capital and to focus sustained military efforts on apprehending terrorists in the Bethlehem area, senior officials said Sunday night. They said the continuous IDF actions against the terrorist infrastructure will continue, and there is unlikely to be one dramatic action in direct response to Sunday’s attack. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said, "There is no doubt this is a horrible attack that cannot go unanswered."
The 8:30 a. m. blast ripped through the Egged bus opposite the capital’s Liberty Bell Park as it was making its way toward the city center.
"There was a tremendous explosion and then everything fell in on me — the windshield, pieces of the bus, blood, and human flesh," said passenger Meir Aharon, who managed to extricate himself from the carnage and was lightly wounded in the attack. The force of the explosion, which thundered throughout central Jerusalem, scattered body parts and glass all over the major thoroughfare.
"There were pieces of human bodies all over the bus and all around the bus,‘ said Jerusalem city councilman and opposition leader Nir Barkat, who was driving across the street at the time of the blast and helped treat the wounded. ’Would that the whole world could see the horrors that were in that bus," he said, his hands, trousers, and shoes covered in blood.
For an hour after the blast, the bodies of the dead lay on the ground as rescue workers picked through the wreckage. Bit by bit, fighting a biting-cold winter wind, the remains of the victims were collected in large white bags for identification and burial. Police said the bomber likely boarded the bus, which began its cross-city route in the city’s new southeastern neighborhood of Har Homa, in Jerusalem’s Talpiot industrial zone.
The bomber took a seat toward the middle of the bus, escaping the notice of two security guards who got on and off the bus minutes later. Then, with the bus approaching the gas station that lies adjacent to the park, he detonated his medium-sized explosives, which were laced with pieces of iron and metal shards to maximize casualties.
"People were screaming ’mommy’ and ’daddy.’ There were body parts everywhere, including some hands and feet scattered outside the bus,‘ medic Reuven Pohl said. ’You could see the debris rising up from the nearby Scottish Church, and then within seconds the smell of explosives came waffling up in the air," recalled eyewitness David Hazan.
Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Mickey Levy said there were no "specific alerts" at the time of the attack, aside from what security officials said were some 50 general intelligence warnings about impending attacks.
Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Shlomo Aharonishky said it was unnecessary to draw a connection between the bombing and Monday’s court debate over the security fence being at The Hague, reiterating that Palestinian terrorist organizations strike at Israeli civilians "whenever and wherever they can."
"Our working assumption is that the Palestinian terrorist organizations are consistently trying to carry out attacks whenever and wherever they can,‘ he said, adding that the security forces are operating on heightened alert this week nevertheless. Aharonishky said the bombers’ successes in repeatedly penetrating Jerusalem were the result of ’dozens of kilometers" where the security fence that is being built around Jerusalem has not been completed. To date, only one third of the planned 80 km. Jerusalem-area barrier has been completed.
The barrier, a network of electronic sensor fences, concrete walls, observation posts, and other obstacles is aimed at preventing Palestinian bombers from entering Israel from the West Bank.
About one-third of the roughly 730 km. security fence going up across the country, which zig-zags in and around the West Bank to incorporate Jewish settlements, has been completed since construction got under way last year.
The attack took place as a group of American Jewish leaders from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations was holding a five-day conference at a hotel just down the block from the scene of the attack.
Deploring the world’s "double standards‘ for criticizing Israel for building the security barrier, Barkat, the Jerusalem council opposition leader, said that ’Our right not to be blown up is more important than the quality of life of people whose lives will be disrupted as a result of… the fence."
In a statement issued hours after the bombing, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei condemned the attack and called for "an immediate halt to these actions," which he said gave Israel an excuse to continue building the barrier and to carry out military raids.
On Sunday night, 38 people remained hospitalized, including a 15-year-old in critical condition. Among the seriously wounded were a teenage brother and sister who were originally evacuated to different Jerusalem hospitals, and were reunited later in the day at the same hospital to make it easier for their parents to be at their bed-sides together. Eleven students were wounded in the attack, the Education Ministry said.
Sunday’s bombing came less than a month after another Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a city bus near Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s official residence on January 29, murdering 11 passengers.
Before the demolished bus in Sunday’s attack was hauled away by late morning, the bloodstained cellphones of passengers rang persistently from the wreckage. A bloodied book of psalms lay amid the destruction, as did a notebook with Bugs Bunny on the cover, and a civics text entitled To Be Citizens in Israel.
About two hours after the attack, the charred skeleton of the bus — a twin of the No. 19 bus targeted last month that was sent to The Hague — was towed away, and the newly cleaned street was reopened to traffic.
The bombing on the No. 14 bus was the second time in just over half a year that the route was targeted by a suicide bomber. On June 11, 2003, a bomber on a bus on the same route going in the opposite direction murdered 17 passengers on Jaffa Road. The attack took place about 45 minutes prior to the weekly cabinet meeting, where Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said it is possible the bombing was timed to coincide with the International Court of Justice hearing in The Hague, in order to prove to the world that the fence doesn’t work.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismissed Mofaz’s analysis, saying the Palestinians don’t need to look for reasons to kill Jews. "They’ve been doing it for years and haven’t stopped for a single day," Sharon said.
One of the ministers said the timing of the attack was bad for the Palestinians, since it would detract from their arguments at The Hague, and that PA officials are probably "pulling their hair out‘ because of the timing. Sharon responded that the Palestinians ’do not pull their hair out" when Jews are killed.
Mofaz opened the cabinet meeting with a survey of the overall security situation. He said that despite the morning’s attack, Israel has been able to foil numerous other suicide attempts, and added that the security fence has proven itself highly effective in reducing the number of successful terrorist attacks.
According to police figures, there have been 101 successful suicide attacks since September 2000, the beginning of the current violence, and another 149 that failed. Failed attacks refer to terrorists who either blew only themselves up or were apprehended while on the way to carrying out a suicide attack.
Of the 934 people killed over the last 41 months, 584 have been killed by suicide bombers — a figure government officials are using to point out the necessity of the fence to keep them from infiltrating Israel.
In Memoriam
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