Israel links Syria to blast, freezes West Bank pullback
JERUSALEM -- Israel declared Syria responsible yesterday for a Palestinian suicide attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub Friday night that killed four Israelis and wounded dozens more. The attack threatened to taint the conciliatory atmosphere that has taken hold since Yasser Arafat died in November.
While not warning of an imminent retaliation against Syria itself, Israeli security officials suggested that a campaign of assassinations could resume against senior members of Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian militant group whose leadership, based in Syria, claimed responsibility yesterday.
''Israel sees Syria and the Islamic Jihad movement as those standing behind the murderous attack in Tel Aviv," the office of the Israeli defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, said in a statement after a meeting of senior security officials.
Israeli officials said that a scheduled pullback from five West Bank cities and towns was on hold while Israel assesses terrorism efforts by the Palestinian side.
Acting separately, Israeli and Palestinian authorities made a total of seven arrests yesterday in connection with the bombing, the first of its kind in nearly four months, security officials said.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, said an outside entity was responsible for the attack, which targeted Israeli patrons waiting to enter a karaoke bar called Stage, a popular night spot on Tel Aviv's Mediterranean seafront promenade.
''There is a third party that wants to sabotage this process," Abbas told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. He did not name a specific group or government. ''This act harms our interests, our path, and our goals, and we will not hesitate for a minute to track them down, bring them to justice, and punish them."
Abbas issued a swift, unequivocal condemnation of the bombing, which struck a sharp blow to Israelis' hopes that the era of suicide attacks could be drawing to a close. The powerful blast, set off in the midst of revelers arriving at the nightclub shortly before midnight, left shrapnel, shards of debris, and body parts in the street.
The attack was condemned by the Bush administration, which announced in a White House statement that it has been in touch with the Palestinian leadership ''to urge immediate and credible action by Palestinian security authorities, in cooperation with the government of Israel, to determine who is behind this terrorist act and to bring them to justice."
Despite the claim of responsibility by Damascus-based Islamic Jihad, Israeli officials and analysts also expressed strong suspicions that another Syrian-linked organization may have been involved: the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah.
''We are well aware that Islamic Jihad has taken responsibility, but . . . we know that over the recent period of time Hezbollah has been actively trying to do something like this," a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said.
A senior Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators were probing Hezbollah links to the attacker, who was identified as a Palestinian university student from a village in the northern West Bank.
The bombing brought a round of denials and accusations among Palestinian groups.
On Saturday, a senior leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the West Bank said a Hezbollah operative, Kais Obeid, had been trying to recruit militants to carry out an attack, offering them cash payments. Obeid also tried to get Al-Aqsa to claim responsibility once the attack had been carried out, the senior leader of the group said.
Talks by the Palestinian factions aimed at formalizing a cease-fire are still expected to take place next weekend in Cairo. But Israel will not allow Islamic Jihad representatives from the Palestinian authorities to attend.
Some of the aftermath of the blast marked a break from the past.
When Arafat was the Palestinian leader, Israel, which believed him to be complicit in many attacks, generally responded to bombings with retaliatory raids in the West Bank or Gaza. This time, Israel has been at pains to assure that it wants to continue a dialogue with Palestinian leaders.
