Blast at Israeli Mall Kills 2

A Palestinian suicide bomber strolled through a shopping mall here Monday evening, paused to watch children play, then detonated his explosives outside an ice cream parlor crowded with families. Two Israelis--a toddler and her grandmother--were killed, and more than 20 adults and children were wounded, police said.

The bombing came as the Israeli army pressed ahead with a campaign of near-daily incursions into Palestinian towns. Israel says the operations are aimed at capturing militants, but Palestinians say they only deepen the occupation and further erode Palestinian sovereignty.

The bomber also died in Monday’s attack at the Super Center outdoor mall in the west-central Israeli city of Petah Tikva. Three of the wounded were in serious condition. At least four children were among the injured, police and hospital officials said.

A Palestinian militia, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is affiliated with the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, claimed responsibility for the suicide attack--the fifth in just over a week. In a statement sent to news agencies, the militia said it was avenging Israel’s killing last week of Mahmoud Titi, the Al Aqsa commander in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank.

Israel blamed Arafat directly for the attack in Petah Tikva, six miles east of Tel Aviv. The Palestinian Authority condemned the bombing as “harmful to our cause and struggle and to the image of the Palestinian people before international public opinion.”

The bomber managed to elude a nationwide alert and strict checkpoints erected to block the movement of potential terrorists, and his success exposed the vulnerability of cities deep inside Israel. Attacks have resumed despite a massive military campaign in the West Bank that Israel said was aimed at wiping out suicide bombers.

Since the campaign officially ended earlier this month, Israel has rejected demands by the Bush administration that it stay out of Palestinian-controlled areas. Instead, the army has entered them at will in what it says is a concerted effort to foil terrorist attacks.

Early today, Israeli forces entered the West Bank town of Jenin. The army released no details.

The incursions--which can last from a few hours to several days--are not a prelude to another wide-scale invasion, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said.

Rather, they are part of a policy that illustrates how completely one of the underpinnings of the 1993 Oslo peace accords--security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority--has vanished after 20 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.

In Petah Tikva, Noam Segev, a 28-year-old paramedic and car dealer, was walking past the mall’s storefronts with his wife, Ravit, and their 3-month-old baby, Ron, when they noticed a Palestinian man mumbling to himself.

The Palestinian paused in front of the plate-glass windows of the Trampolina play center for children, watched briefly, then rounded a corner, Segev said. A few moments later, the man blew himself up after passing the Explosive Pizzeria and stopping outside the Bravissimo espresso bar and gelateria.

Segev rushed to help victims, ripping his shirt into shreds to serve as tourniquets. He aided a deeply cut woman, but saw a little girl who was dead, her midsection torn apart. A blue stroller, apparently hers, lay mangled on its side. Segev then attempted to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a baby who seemed to be gasping her last breaths.

“I served in Jenin [during the West Bank offensive], but I never had any illusions” that the suicide attacks would stop, Segev said, his pants stained by a child’s blood. “Either we fight to the death, or I’m going to America. I’m willing to die, but in fighting with the enemy, not in my home. I don’t want to see children die.”

Popular Gathering Spot

for Parents and Children

The mall is a popular after-work gathering place for young families. Relaxed scenes of children playing and eating ice cream while their parents sipped cappuccinos and nibbled pizza were abruptly replaced by wrecked tables and chairs, the wounded writhing on the ground, debris and shards of glass strewn over sidewalk tiles and shop awnings that had been spattered with blood.

Galit Margolinsky was with her son and a group of mothers and their children inside a shop when they heard the huge explosion. The women gathered their children in their arms and fled in every direction.

“I saw kids lying on the floor asking for help,” Margolinsky said. “Their mothers were lying on top of them, shouting, ‘Save my child!’ We didn’t know what to do.”

The two dead were identified by police as an 18-month-old girl and her grandmother, a woman in her 70s.

Both the damage and the death toll could have been worse if the explosion had not occurred outside, Israeli Police Chief Shlomo Aharonishky said.

Public Security Minister Uzi Landau accused Arafat of being responsible for the bombing.

“What we see today is simply an ongoing practice, instigated by the Palestinian Authority led by Arafat, to go out and make our civilians, women and children, deliberate targets,” he told reporters at the scene.

Aides to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hinted of harsh retaliation, and Landau urged a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Earlier Monday, residents of the biblical town of Bethlehem awoke to find Israeli troops patrolling their streets for the second time in 24 hours. Frequent incursions have become the norm of the Israeli army, whose commanders openly acknowledge that they have taken all security operations into their own hands and away from Palestinian officials.

Soldiers imposed a curfew that confined tens of thousands of Bethlehem residents to their homes. Tanks and armored personnel carriers blocked streets leading to the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born, and troops carried out house-to-house searches in the Dahaisha refugee camp and other neighborhoods.

The Israeli army said it arrested three militants, including Ahmed Mughrabi, 28, a Bethlehem commander of the Al Aqsa militia, which has carried out several suicide bombings inside Israel.

Israeli forces were also still operating in the northern West Bank town of Kalkilya and in villages northeast of Tulkarm as well as on the outskirts of Ramallah--all areas under Palestinian control.

Israeli commanders, saying they are going by intelligence information, have been targeting towns, villages and refugee camps where they suspect militants are planning attacks on Israelis. Troops swoop in, usually under cover of darkness, to conduct searches and make arrests.

Ben-Eliezer says the raids have thwarted dozens of attacks since Israel completed the West Bank offensive.

“The operations are meant to prevent terror attacks and arrest terrorists, and we will act anywhere we deem appropriate,” army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz said. Another senior military commander said the army no longer recognizes any Palestinian territory as being off-limits to Israeli forces.

The streets of Bethlehem and neighboring Beit Jala were deserted Monday save for armored Israeli vehicles and the occasional carload of reporters. Residents peered warily out of the windows of their homes from behind drawn curtains, as they had for weeks during the Israeli army’s standoff with Palestinian militants who sought refuge in the Church of the Nativity and refused to surrender for more than a month. The standoff was resolved earlier this month when the wanted men inside agreed to go into exile in the Gaza Strip and Europe.

Reporters allowed to accompany Israeli troops into Bethlehem early Monday watched soldiers set up two sniper guns on the second floor of a three-story building on Manger Square, near the Church of the Nativity. During the siege of the church, Israeli snipers shot several Palestinian militants who ventured out of the church.

Little Resistance Is

Encountered This Time

Lt. Col. Doron Mor-Yosef, commander of one of at least three battalions that entered Bethlehem this time, said a force of jeeps secured the area around the church at the beginning of the operation.

They were followed by armor, as the army sought to prevent any gunmen from again fleeing to the basilica.

This time, however, soldiers encountered no resistance.

Palestinians say the invasions make it impossible either to rebuild their security forces or to restore a sense of normality to towns damaged during the five-week offensive Israel launched March 29, after a suicide bomber killed 29 people at a Passover Seder in Netanya.

“The Israelis are doing this in order to create a rift between the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people,” Mohammed Madani, the Palestinian governor of the Bethlehem area, said in an interview at his home in Beit Jala, a suburb of Bethlehem.

“When they come into Area A [Palestinian-controlled territory], the Israelis show that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are unable to defend the people, and it makes the people ask: ‘Why do we have this government?’”

Curtius reported from Bethlehem and Petah Tikva and Wilkinson from Jerusalem.