A Palestinian suicide bomber detonated explosives on a crowded bus in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing eight other people and wounding more than 50 on the eve of an international court hearing on a West Bank barrier that Israel says it is building to prevent such attacks.
The bomber struck the No. 14 bus during the morning rush hour at the start of the Israeli workweek, killing and maiming commuters, including teenagers on their way to school.
For many Israelis, the attack, claimed by Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, was ringing proof of the need for the barrier.
Israeli officials have called the hearings, set to start Monday at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, an attempt to put Israel’s policies on trial.
Palestinian officials who have campaigned against the barrier–a complex of fences, walls and trenches that slices into the West Bank–condemned the bombing, acknowledging that it hurts their case at the international court.
The bomber, identified as Mohammed Zoul, 23, from the village of Hussan near Bethlehem, detonated explosives packed with shrapnel as the bus stood at a traffic light near a city park.
The attacker carried the bomb in a bag and went undetected by two security guards who rode the bus but then got off, a police spokesman said.
The blast spewed body parts and bits of glass over a wide area near the Inbal Hotel, where leaders of major American Jewish organizations were meeting. Ora Yairov, 52, who rushed to the scene from her home nearby, watched from a gas station across the street.
“I saw human ribs in the station and a person dead in his seat on the bus,” she said. “They should see that in The Hague.”
Two of the dead were identified as 18-year-old high school students; another was a soldier. Eight of the wounded were reported to be in serious condition.
After the attack, Alice Eisenrot, 41, lay trembling in a bed in the emergency room of Hadassah Hospital. She was driving home after taking her daughters to school when the bus was bombed near her car, she said.
“There was a terrifying silence, and suddenly the ambulances,” she recalled. “I didn’t want to look. My legs were shaking, and I couldn’t drive. The car stalled, and I got out and sat on the sidewalk.”
For Eisenrot, the bombing evoked an earlier trauma. She was near the bombing of a Jerusalem cafe in September and witnessed the carnage there.
“The world should let us build the fence,” she said. “They should come and experience what I’ve been through and then maybe they’ll understand. We’re living with terrorism, and we need something to protect us. Then we can make peace.”
A statement by Al-Aqsa called the barrier “a Nazi wall which will not stop our attacks,” and said the bombing was retaliation for the barrier and for an Israeli raid Feb. 11 that killed 15 Palestinians in Gaza City.
In a farewell video, the bomber warned: “The more your army attacks our people, the more martyrdom operations there will be.”
Israeli forces sealed off Bethlehem after the attack.
Palestinians condemn blast
The Palestinian leadership condemned the bombing, saying the explosion was timed to occur before the international court session and at the height of an international campaign in support of the Palestinian case against the barrier.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia called for “an immediate halt to these actions,” which he said give Israel a pretext to continue building the barrier and conducting lethal military strikes.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said the attack “proves how essential it is to build the fence. We will continue to build it, because it saves lives.”
About a quarter of the barrier, planned to run for more than 400 miles, has been completed in the northern West Bank, and Israeli officials say it has stopped infiltrations from there by suicide bombers and other attackers.
The barrier dips into the West Bank to loop around some Jewish settlements, hemming in some Palestinian communities and cutting off residents from farmland, schools and places of work.
The UN said in a recent report that the completed barrier would slice off 11 percent of the West Bank, disrupting the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
In an apparent attempt to blunt foreign criticism before the court hearing, the Israelis began Sunday to dismantle a 5-mile section of fence that had separated the Palestinian village of Baka al-Sharkiya from the rest of the West Bank. It will be replaced by a barrier along the West Bank boundary.
Israeli officials said recently that some sections of the barrier could be shifted closer to the West Bank’s border with Israel to ease conditions for the Palestinians and to accommodate U.S. concerns.
Israelis defiant
But after Sunday’s attack, Israeli spokesmen sounded defiant.
Nir Barakat, a member of the Jerusalem City Council who witnessed the bombing and helped evacuate the wounded, said the hardships caused to Palestinians by the barrier could not be compared with what had happened on the bus.
“Life is more important than quality of life,” he said. “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 our protection by the fence.”
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said the attack was “an answer to the world that has gathered in The Hague to judge the state of Israel.”
“It is not Israel who is on trial at The Hague, but Palestinian terrorism,” he said.
The court is to issue a non-binding advisory opinion on the legality of the barrier at the request of the United Nations. Although Israel has submitted a brief to the court, it has decided not to attend the hearings, asserting that the barrier is a legitimate measure of self-defense that should not be subject to a ruling by the court.
