The Tel Aviv atrocity

WHEN A suicide bomber sent to Tel Aviv by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Islamic Jihad detonated a bomb at a crowded restaurant yesterday, an Israeli woman was torn apart in sight of her two young daughters and her husband. The abstractions of Mideast power politics must not be allowed to obscure the suffering of the innocent in such an atrocity, or the cruelty of the killers.

It is in the nature of a vendetta that both sides try to justify as retaliation acts that otherwise would stand as sheer murder. The code of the blood feud assumes that every member of the enemy's camp may be slain in the name of avenging the honor of one's own clan, tribe, or nation. Whether innocent civilians are murdered by states, by their proxies, or by stateless terrorist groups, the threat is the same. The murders rip away at the civilized conventions that protect the innocent.

The worst response to yesterday's bombing in Tel Aviv would be to accede to the regressive rules of a vendetta. The crime must be denounced -- as it was by governments around the world, by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Those who boasted of the crime or rationalized it as resistance to Israeli aggression -- as did Islamic Jihad, the Hamas movement that now governs the Palestinian Authority, and Iran -- must also be denounced as murderers or accessories to murder.

Nevertheless, the only way to prevent a descent into the inferno of a vendetta is to pursue a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. In the near term, this means that Israel, the United States, and the European Union should not cut off humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. An economic blockade of the Palestinian people is almost certain to magnify the rage and despair that the terrorist factions feed upon.

Even though Israel, the Bush administration, and European governments do not want to help finance Hamas as long as the Islamist movement refuses to foreswear terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and honor the Palestinian Authority's past agreements with Israel, a policy of freezing humanitarian aid is likely only to strengthen Hamas politically.

The reality is that some Arab states share with Israel, the United States, and the EU a wish to see Hamas fail. But none should wish to see the living conditions of Palestinians made more miserable. Large majorities of both Palestinians and Israelis tell pollsters they want a negotiated two-state solution to their conflict. If there is no progress toward a negotiated peace, there will be regression toward the barbarism of the vendetta.