Suicide Attacker Kills at Least 19 in North of Israel

October 5, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS and GREG MYRE

HAIFA, Israel, Sunday, Oct. 5 — A bomber charged into a crowded seaside restaurant in this northern Israeli city on Saturday afternoon and detonated explosives that killed at least 19 people, besides herself. At least three of the dead were children.

The attack, which also left 50 people wounded, raised the possibility of a harsh Israeli reprisal directed at Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.

The suicide bombing was the first large attack since Israel decided in principle on Sept. 11 to "remove" Mr. Arafat even if it meant killing him. That decision followed two suicide bombings days earlier.

But the Israeli response to the Haifa bombing was measured, at least initially. It came in the early hours of Sunday when the military carried out two helicopter missile strikes in Gaza. In Gaza City, helicopters fired two missiles at the house of a wanted Hamas figure, but no one was hurt, according to Palestinian security officials.

In central Gaza, three rockets were fired at another wanted militant in an open field but missed him. Israeli troops also moved into Jenin, in the northern West Bank, and destroyed the house where the suicide bomber lived, Palestinians reported.

As dawn rose on Sunday, there was little activity outside Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah.
Israel's actions were in keeping with the kind it has conducted in recent weeks, and so far did not represent a major escalation.

Hours before the attacks, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon consulted with security officials in Jerusalem. "Everyone who has had a hand in this attack should worry," Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Mr. Sharon, said when asked about Mr. Arafat. "We have the full right to take whatever measures we choose to take to defend the lives of our citizens."

The explosion at Haifa on Saturday, one day before Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, shattered several weeks of relative calm.

"I pray to God this will be the last bombing," said Joseph Assad, an Israeli Arab who rushed to the restaurant, where a relative worked as a waiter. The relative, Najar Osama, the husband of Mr. Assad's niece, was among those killed, he said.

"If we continue with this bloodshed, we are all losers, Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews," he said.

The explosion blew out windows, overturned tables and left the floor covered in blood at the Maxim restaurant, a one-story stone building on the main road in Haifa, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The restaurant was filled with families eating lunch on the Jewish Sabbath.
Police officers who spoke to survivors said that the young woman carrying the bomb, apparently in a concealed body belt, walked from an adjacent highway across a parking lot and up a short flight of stairs into the restaurant's glassed entryway. They said she was wearing casual clothes that made her indistinguishable from those in the restaurant enjoying an afternoon by the
beach.

They said the scene inside the devastated restaurant suggested that she had walked some way out among the crowded tables before detonating the bomb, apparently with a finger switch.
Most Israeli restaurants employ security guards to check any suspicious people approaching entrances. Maxim's employed a heavy-set young man in jeans and running shoes standing outside a few paces from the stairs leading inside. After the attack, the guard's body lay on the asphalt beside the stairs, and the glass wall behind him was pitted with what appeared to be the sort of small caliber bullets fired by an automatic rifle.

But police officers at the scene said that they had no reports of a rifle volley before the attack and that the guard appeared to have died, like many of the diners, from shrapnel injuries.
Islamic Jihad, a group behind many suicide bombings, said in phone calls to news organizations that Hanadi Jaradat, a young woman from the West Bank town of Jenin, had carried out the attack. Ms. Jaradat's relatives said her brother and cousin were killed by Israeli troops in Jenin three months ago. Other reports said the bomber was a law student who was close to taking her bar examination. These descriptions could not immediately be confirmed.

Palestinian women have carried out several of the more than 100 suicide bombings by Palestinian factions in the last three years.

Haifa is known for its generally harmonious relations between Jews and Arabs, and the restaurant is owned by Israeli Arabs and Jews. The wounded included members of the Matar family, the Arab owners, the Israeli officials said. The Matars are Christians, and the restaurant's chimney had a white cross painted on it.

As he usually does, Mr. Arafat condemned the attack. "President Arafat considers this a serious attempt to compromise the national consensus in a critical situation," a statement released by the official Palestinian news agency said. On Saturday night, Mr. Arafat's compound was outwardly calm, with only a minimal Palestinian security presence outside.

But the Israeli government said the Palestinian Authority, led by Mr. Arafat, was responsible because it had failed to order the Palestinian security forces to crack down on violent groups.

"Anyone who fails to prevent attacks is as guilty as someone who perpetrates it," said Mr. Gissin, the spokesman for the prime minister.

After two suicide bombings on Sept. 9 that killed 15 people, Mr. Sharon's government decided in principle to oust Mr. Arafat. The government did not say when or how it might act, but indicated that the options included tightening the siege around his compound, arresting him and putting him on trial, sending him into exile or even killing him.

International condemnation was sharp and swift. Even the United States, Israel's strongest ally, objected to action against Mr. Arafat. In the following days, Israeli officials sought to play down the decision, saying they did not intend to move anytime soon against Mr. Arafat.

But in the aftermath of Saturday's bombing, several Israeli cabinet ministers said it was time for Israel to oust Mr. Arafat.

"Arafat is a terrorist. He was a terrorist for 30 years. Apparently he's going to be a terrorist for the rest of his life," said Eliezer Sandberg, the minister of science and technology. "We have to do something to change that, and the steps begin right here."

Despite Haifa's reputation for tolerance between Jews and Arabs, it has been a target for suicide bombers from the nearby West Bank. Because many Arabs are on the streets of Haifa — about 10 percent of the population of 330,000 are Israeli Arabs — Palestinian attackers are less likely to stand out. The most recent attack in Haifa was on a bus in March, killing 15 people.

For the last year, Israel has been building a barrier to prevent attackers in the West Bank from reaching Israel. The first segment, which was completed in July, runs for more than 80 miles along the northern West Bank and was intended to shield cities like Haifa.

But Palestinians can still go around the barrier at either end. Mr. Sharon's government on Wednesday approved the building of the next section of the barrier, which runs deep into the West Bank, to give at least partial protection to several large Jewish settlements.

Fearing a possible attack this weekend, Israel on Friday imposed a ban on Palestinians entering Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel has often put such measures in place during Jewish holidays, but such restrictions have not always proved successful.

In other violence on Saturday, Israeli security forces in the West Bank town of Tulkarm tracked down and killed a Palestinian man believed responsible for shooting dead five Israelis in an attack last year, a military official said. Palestinians in the town said a young boy had also been killed, but the official said he had no information on that incident.

The Israeli forces shot dead the suspect, Sirhan Sirhan, who had been sought in the attack at an Israeli communal farm in November that killed the five Israelis, including a mother and her two children. Mr. Sirhan is not related to the man with the same name who assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company