Four times, the dull thud of explosions and the shrill wail of ambulance sirens reverberated early Monday as Palestinian bombs exploded in residential neighborhoods, wounding five Israelis and further fraying nerves across the Holy City.
In another day of violence across Israel and the West Bank, the Israeli army responded to the Jerusalem bombings with a missile strike by a helicopter gunship against a Palestinian security post near the West Bank town of Hebron.
One Palestinian was killed and 17 wounded.
Two more Palestinians were killed and three Israelis wounded in gun battles between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen later in Hebron.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the bombings, saying they were reprisals for the assassination last week of the radical faction’s leader, Mustafa Zibri, also known as Abu Ali Mustafa.
The faction said the attacks were carried out by its military wing, which now goes by the name: The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigade.
Three of the bombs exploded in French Hill, a neighborhood in north Jerusalem that Israel captured from the Arabs during the 1967 Six-Day War. The first two exploded before dawn, awakening residents but causing no injuries.
The third was a car bomb that went off during the morning rush hour, detonating near several children on their way to school; Israel’s fall term for classes resumed Sunday.
The explosion injured one woman after setting her vehicle aflame and spraying shrapnel across the street.
The fourth bomb exploded about the same time in a municipal truck in the south Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. It was believed that the bomb was planted in the truck in French Hill and driven to Gilo by the unsuspecting driver. Two Israelis were injured in that incident.
The violence occurred despite efforts to arrange a meeting this week between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to try to quell the violence.
The idea for the meeting came out of the deal reached last week that ended Israel’s two-day incursion into the Palestinian village of Beit Jala. In exchange, Arafat pledged to stop Palestinian gunmen from shooting into Gilo, which had provoked Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon into sending in troops.
Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, met with Israeli and Palestinian officials Monday in an effort to nail down the details of the meeting.
“We are here to work as close as possible, as intensely as possible, to see if that meeting can take place,” Solana said after meeting with one of Arafat’s aides in Jericho.
Few on either side are holding out much hope for the talks, because other such efforts have failed decisively over the course of the 11-month Palestinian intifada, or uprising. But Peres expressed typical optimism Monday, saying he hopes the meeting would lead to a cease-fire.
“I think [Arafat] also needs it,” Peres said. “The uprising is not yielding so much fruit. On the other hand, it is yielding more and more fatalities, unfortunately, and is causing great hardship.”
The violence also set a bitter backdrop for Tuesday’s election of a new leader for Israel’s beleaguered Labor Party. The party has been rudderless since Sharon’s defeat of Labor leader Ehud Barak last February.
Polls show that Avraham Burg, the speaker of the Knesset, or parliament, holds a slight lead over his main opponent, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer. Analysts said the result may be dictated by the turnout in a race that has raised little enthusiasm.
With a vast majority of Israelis supporting Sharon’s handling of the intifada, there is little chance that Labor can wrest back the prime minister’s office from his Likud faction in the near future.
One of the main questions in the race is whether Burg would, at some point, try to pull Labor out of its coalition with Likud, which would disrupt the unity behind Sharon. Ben Eliezer has worked closely with Sharon in the coalition.
Nearly 700 people have been killed in the 11 months of the intifada fighting.
