Nazir Majally, Asharq Al-Awsat

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 21 August 2003 —Palestinian authorities vowed to capture militants behind a massive bomb in Jerusalem which led Israel to freeze all contacts and left US-backed peace efforts in their biggest crisis to date.

“Orders have been issued to security forces to investigate and arrest those who are responsible,” Information Minister Nabil Amr told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah in the face of intensified demands from Israel and Washington that the Palestinians tackle hard-liners.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was set to deliver Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat an ultimatum yesterday to back a clampdown on militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad or see his Cabinet resign en masse, a senior official said.

“Abu Mazen will present Arafat and the Palestinian leadership with four demands,” the official said on condition of anonymity ahead of a late-night meeting here. “If they don’t get Arafat’s support, the Cabinet will resign.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided early to shelve all further talks with the Palestinian Authority in anger at what he saw as the failure of his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas to rein in rejectionist groups.

For his part, Abbas vowed to catch the bombers and severed all contacts with the hard-line groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which both claimed responsibility for the blast which killed 20 people as well as the bomber — the bloodiest attack in Israel since a double bombing in January that killed 23.

Palestinian security sources said that the 25-year-old bomber was a religious teacher from Hebron who had belonged to Islamic Jihad but had since joined Hamas.

A senior Palestinian official, who asked not to be named, said Abbas would take unspecified measures against the groups, which he held “responsible for harming the Palestinian national interests”.

The bomb went off while Abbas was in the middle of talks in Gaza City with Islamic Jihad officials in which he was trying to persuade them to stick with a three-month truce declared by them and other hard-line groups on June 29. Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan also pointed the finger at Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

“The Israeli government is responsible for the escalation through its repeated violations of the cease-fire, but at the same time we believe that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also responsible,” he said in a statement after meeting with the heads of the Palestinian security services in Gaza.

Hamas official Ismail Haniya criticized Abbas for laying the blame at his group’s door and said it was important that the Palestinians remained united. “Who is responsible for damaging the Palestinian national interest? It’s the occupation and we should pursue the occupiers not the Palestinian resistance groups or the Palestinian people.”

Mohammad Al-Hindi, a senior figure within Islamic Jihad, also said the Palestinians must not “turn our backs on each other”. Sharon’s foreign policy adviser Zalman Shoval said that it would take more than words of condemnation from the Palestinian Authority to show that it was serious about tackling the militants.

“Words are cheap,” he told reporters. “The commitment which the Palestinian Authority has given under the road map is very clear — that they break up, dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.”

Sharon convened a series of meetings with security chiefs and ministers to consider a response as Israel imposed a massive security cordon around the Palestinian territories.

“A general closure has been enforced,” an army spokesman told reporters. Israeli Army helicopters and F-16 fighter jets could be seen flying over Gaza but there was no immediate military action on the ground.

The Israelis had been set to pull back from two West Bank towns but Tuesday night’s bombing of a packed bus in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of central Jerusalem prompted the Jewish state to tighten security instead. Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said the bomber had only been on the bus for “a few seconds” before the five kilogram device exploded.

Not all victims had been identified almost 24 hours after the devastating bombing, but the first funerals were held yesterday afternoon in Jerusalem. Despite protestations by the hard-line groups that they remained committed to the truce, the attack served to shatter what had been Abbas’ main achievement since his appointment in April.

The bomb appeared to have put the peace process into reverse, with Israel ruling out the immediate transfer of more West Bank towns to Palestinian control and gestures such as the release of more prisoners. In a sign of Washington’s concern about the state of the road map, special envoy John Wolf — the man appointed by Bush to oversee its implementation — was dispatched to Jerusalem late.

— Additional input from agencies.