Author:
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 9, 2001
A powerful car bomb exploded in
an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Jerusalem on Thursday, sending
tremors through Israel just two days after right-wing leader Ariel Sharon
was elected prime minister.
No one was injured in the blast,
although one person was treated for shock, according to Israeli police.
The blast nonetheless prompted Sharon
to demand that Palestinians immediately halt "terrorism and violence."
"I will try to advance the peace
process, but that depends on an absolute halt to violence," Sharon said
after the explosion in the neighbourhood of Beit Israel in west Jerusalem.
"The peace negotiations are important
and the government will do everything to that end, but terrorism and violence
must cease," he said.
Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak said: "This proves that the Palestinians will try to dictate
to the new government about the peace process."
A senior official in Yasser Arafat's
Palestinian Authority said details of the incident were too sketchy to
comment on, and that it was unlikely that Palestinians could have easily
roamed around Beit Israel, near Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's largest ultra-Orthodox
area.
In Washington, the White House said
the blast was "another reminder" of the need to forge "a just and lasting
peace" in the Middle East.
The attack is "another reminder
of the need to create a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, to bring
an end to the cycle of violence," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told
reporters.
Little was left of the exploded
car, which was reduced to a burnt-out shell.
The force of the blast threw metal
scraps throughout the area, which within minutes became crowded with onlookers
dressed in black Jewish skull caps, black hats and long overcoats.
Police formed human barricades to
keep back the crowds as bomb squads and dogs picked through the rubble.
Several people chanted "death to
the Arabs".
Others carried signs, reading "Kahane
was right", alluding to the late Jewish extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, who
advocated expelling all Arabs from Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Police first said a motorcycle patrol
arrested two suspects as they were fleeing the scene on foot towards east
Jerusalem, the Arab section of the city, but no further details of the
men were available.
Later, however, a police spokesman
denied that there had been any arrests and refused to elaborate.
He said only: "There were no arrests,
and if there are any in the coming hours, you will not know about them."
Jerusalem police chief Miki Levy
said earlier that "the booby-trapped car contained a large amount of explosives
and was completed destroyed in the blast," A previously unknown Palestinian
group, the Popular Palestinian Resistance Forces, claimed responsibility
for the blast, saying it was designed to counter the "Zionist arrogance"
of Sharon.
In an anonymous telephone call to
AFP, a man representing the group claimed responsibility.
"There will be a series of other
attacks against the Zionist arrogance of Ariel Sharon," the caller said
before hanging up.
The caller said the bomb was set
off by a cell called the "martyrs of Sabra and Shatila."
Sharon is reviled among Arabs for
his role as defence minister in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the
subsequent massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by Christian militiamen
in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, for which an Israeli panel found
him indirectly responsible.
On New Year's Day, 20 Israelis were
injured when a car bomb exploded by a bus station in the northern Israeli
coastal city of Netanya.
In Jerusalem in November, two Israelis
were killed when a powerful car bomb exploded near a busy market in the
heart of the city, an attack claimed by the Islamic Jihad. (AFP)
