Two Suicide Bombings Threaten Israeli-Palestinian Cease-Fire

The first attack took place outside a market in the town of Rosh Haayin, close to Tel Aviv. One Israeli was killed, and the suicide bomber’s body was recovered. The bombing injured at least 10 others.

A local branch of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the Rosh Haayin bombing. The group said the suicide bomber was a 17-year-old from the Askar refugee camp.

“The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claims responsibility for today’s attack [in Rosh Haayin]. The bombing was a response to Israel’s deadly attack in Askar refugee camp [in the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday] in which two civilians and two Hamas leaders were killed,” a senior Brigades official told Reuters News Agency.

The official also said the attack was in retaliation for all Israeli attacks, assassinations, raids and arrests that “violate the truce,” a reference to the three-month cease-fire militants agreed to on June 29.

Less than an hour after the Rosh Haayin incident, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a bus stop near the West Bank settlement of Ariel, according to police. He killed one Israeli and critically injured two others. According to rescue services, the dead and injured were teenagers.

In a phone call to Agence France Presse, the militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the Ariel bombing. Hamas’s military wing, Ezzedine al-Qassam, said on its Web site that a 21-year-old carried out the bombing to avenge an Israeli raid that killed four Palestinians last Friday, including two Hamas members.

A Hamas spokesman, Abdel Aziz Rantissi, told the BBC in a telephone interview that today’s attack was justified.

“All Palestinian organizations are still committed to the truce, but will not stay silent in the face of Israeli terrorism,” he said.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades had vowed reprisals following Friday’s Nablus raid, although Hamas’ political leaders said they would keep the June 29 truce.

Tuesday’s attacks were the first since July 7, when a woman was killed in Yabetz, north of Tel Aviv. The bombings occurred hours before U.S. envoy William Burns met with Israeli officials to stress the Bush administration’s opposition to the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank to halt Palestinian infiltrators. The violence may threaten the Palestinian Authority’s campaign to stop the construction of the wall.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responded to the violence by canceling the release of 76 Palestinians from Israeli jails. The prisoners, who were imprisoned for criminal activity unrelated to militant violence, were returned to their prison in northern Israel. They had been traveling by bus to a West Bank location where they were to be freed later Tuesday.