ANATOMY
OF THE JERUSALEM BUS BOMBING
Author Unknown
The
belt was packed with ball bearings, tiny metal marbles that tore
through flesh. The explosion itself peeled back the top of the bus like a tin can. Inside the bus, the bodies of three women, one wearing a blue flowered dress, were still in their seats, but their heads were gone.
There
were arms and legs, recognizable body parts, strewn around the bus, and a pool
of blood on the road under the back door. Student backpacks were still
on the seats.
This was the aftermath of the most lethal attack in Israel's capital since 1996 and the second most lethal since the intifada began 20 months ago.
With
19 dead, including at least two Arabs, and 70 wounded, Jerusalem is still
reeling from the attack. Another bus bombing two weeks ago in northern Israel
also killed 19. Both of these attacks are second to the Passover massacre in
Netanya where 29 were killed at a hotel.
Tuesday's
bombing marked the 70th in the past 21 months.
Michael
Lasri overslept Tuesday morning so he had to run to catch the bus to get to
school.
"I
left a little late, I usually get up earlier," he said from his hospital
bed.
The
15-year-old sat behind two of his friends on the crowded rush-hour bus with its
usual passengers, teenagers on their way to nearby high schools, people on the
way to work. It was just before 8 a.m.
The
bus paused in the Arab village of Beit Safafa, where Michael recalled seeing a
stocky young man wearing a baggy red shirt outside his trousers board the bus.
"I
thought that's what a terrorist should look like. He got on fast, he
didn't
pay. He was wearing red. He came on the bus so fast, and I even thought maybe
something was wrong in that one second," Michael remembered.
Then
the man exploded
Michael
ducked down behind the seat: "I felt like the hand of God was pushing me
down." When he was asked what he saw next, his answer was a chilling
reminder of just how everyday this conflict has become.
"I
saw what you see on TV all the time. All the different limbs."
Fifteen
of the 19 dead were from Gilo, a southern Jerusalem neighborhood often shot at
by Palestinian gunmen from the Arab village of Beit Jalla across the valley.
The
youngest of the dead was Galila Bugala, 11. She was born in Israel to a
family of Christian Ethiopian immigrants. At school, Galila was busy planning
her class's end-of-year party. This summer, her family intended to move to New
York. The Bugalas did not hear about their daughter's death until 9 p.m.
Tuesday.
Bus
driver Rahamim Zidkiyahu, 51, was not supposed to be driving the ill-fated bus,
but switched with another driver. He had worked as a bus driver since 1975. He
leaves behind a wife and four children.
Some
seek to justify suicide bombings saying that Palestinians act out of desperation
and hopelessness.
But
like many 'martyrs' before him, Mohammed al Ghoul, a 22-year-old, from the Al
Faraa refugee camp near Nablus, didn't quite fit the picture of desperate. From
a relatively well-off family, Ghoul was in the first semester of a master's
degree program in Islamic studies at An Najah University.
"I
am happy that my body will be the response for the attacks conducted by the
Israelis and that my body will turn into an explosive shred mill against the
Israelis," his father quoted Mohammed al Ghoul's suicide note as saying.
In his note, Ghoul said he'd tried twice before to stage attacks, but didn't
explain why he'd failed.
"How
beautiful it is to make my bomb shrapnel kill the enemy. How
beautiful
it is to kill and to be killed not to love death, but to struggle for life, to
kill and be killed for the lives of the coming generation," Ghoul said.
He
dated the letter Saturday and went to see relatives one last time this weekend.
One sister said only later did they realize he must have been saying goodbye.
In
the refugee camp on Tuesday, his father, Haza al Ghoul, 65, said a
Hamas
official called him to inform him that his son carried out the attack.
"He's
a martyr," Haza said. "We have only to ask our God to be merciful with
him.... Our sons want to die for our land, to get it back."
The
words that came tumbling from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the sight of
Tuesday's terror attack were as raw and gripping as the scene itself.
Standing
amid corpses in body bags, pools of blood and the bus' skeleton, Sharon wondered
aloud about the prospective Palestinian state, now high on the international
agenda.
"The
horrible pictures of the acts of Palestinian murder that we saw here are
stronger than any words," Sharon said. "It is interesting what kind of
Palestinian state they have in mind. What kind of Palestinian state? What are
they talking about? The horrible thing that we see here is a continuation of
Palestinian terrorism, and against this terrorism we must fight and struggle,
and that we will do."
Sharon
underscored the incongruity of talking statehood while Palestinians are blowing
up children on their way to school.
IDF
forces entered Palestinian towns overnight including Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilyah
and Hebron, but were already starting to pull out of some of them on Wednesday
morning. The military response was muted and is likely not Israel's final answer
to the Jerusalem massacre. The Israeli cabinet has approved a new military
policy to seize Palestinian Authority territory in response to every future
terror attack.
The
Palestinian Authority seemingly condemned the bombing, but it denied Israeli
accusations that it was to blame while Palestinians broadcasters justified the
attack.
"We
condemn all attacks against civilians, whether Palestinians or
Israelis,"
said Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a senior aide to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser
Arafat. "But at the same time, the Israeli government's accusations against
the Palestinian Authority about responsibility for the attack are
rejected."
Palestinian
radio broadcasters justified the attack saying that the
victims
were mostly "colonists from the colony of Gilo which was built on land
taken from our people in Bethlehem."