JERUSALEM — In the Byzantine politics of the Middle East, even a suicide bombing is subject to differing interpretations.
After a suicide bomber detonated his explosives aboard a bus near Haifa on Wednesday, killing eight Israelis, Palestinian officials said the attack proved that Israel’s military operation in the West Bank was ineffective in halting terror.
The Bush administration said the attack reinforced the need for Israel to withdraw its forces.
Yet Israeli officials countered that the attack proved the necessity of continuing the operation until the entire network of Palestinian terror is eradicated.
The bomber also wounded 14 Israelis. It was at least the fourth Palestinian suicide attack to take place since Israel launched Operation Protective Wall on March 29 in an attempt to round up terrorists and collect illegal arms in Palestinian-controlled cities.
Hours after the bombing, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to press ahead with Israel’s military operation — a promise he made several times this week despite growing U.S. pressure to withdraw.
For days, President Bush and other U.S. officials have been calling for an end to the operation.
Sharon gave a mixed response to the U.S. pressure early Tuesday morning, when he had the Israel Defense Force withdraw from two West Bank cities, Tulkarm and Kalkilya, but at the same time ordered his troops into the town of Dura, near Hebron.
Then, late on Wednesday, Sharon announced he was withdrawing from the West Bank villages of Yatta and Samua, near Hebron, and Qabatya, near Jenin.
Israeli and American observers had speculated that Sharon would order a full-scale withdrawal before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Israel by the end of the week.
But a deadly suicide bombing Tuesday in Jenin — the West Bank city that has witnessed the fiercest fighting since Operation Protective Wall began — may only harden Sharon’s resolve to press on.
Speaking after he received word that 13 Israeli reservists had been killed in a Palestinian ambush in Jenin’s crowded refugee camp, Sharon sounded a defiant tone.
“It was a difficult day,” Sharon said Tuesday. “This battle is a battle for survival of the Jewish people, for survival of the state of Israel.
“We will continue the operation until the terrorist infrastructure is destroyed,” Sharon said. “Then we can begin to address the political process.”
Clashes continued in Jenin on Tuesday evening, when another Israeli soldier was killed and 12 were wounded while searching a building.
In other violence that day, an Israeli army officer, Maj. Asaf Asulin, was killed in the West Bank town of Nablus. The IDF said it was investigating the possibility that he was killed by friendly fire.
On Wednesday, Sharon spoke at an army command post overlooking the Jenin refugee camp and vowed to stay in the West Bank until the anti-terror campaign is finished.
If Israel withdraws now, “we will have to return,” he said. “Once we finish, we are not going to stay here. But first we have to accomplish our mission.”
The ambush in Jenin occurred when an IDF unit entered an enclosed courtyard as part of their house-to-house search for terrorists and weapons.
With most of the troops inside, a suicide bomber blew himself up, and Palestinians stationed on the surrounding rooftops opened fire and threw explosives at the soldiers. Surrounding walls collapsed on the troops, burying them. Eight soldiers were killed.
A second group of soldiers responding to the explosions also came under fire. Five other soldiers were killed and nine were wounded.
On Wednesday, armed Palestinians in Jenin began surrendering to Israeli forces. Reports said some 200 Palestinians, including civilians, had given themselves up.
More than 100 Palestinians are believed to have been killed during the Israeli operation in the Jenin camp. Among those reported killed was Mahmoud Tawalbeh, 23, a leader of Islamic Jihad who masterminded a number of suicide bombings in Israel.
Since the start of Operation Protective Wall, 22 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Jenin. The refugee camp is a stronghold for Islamic terrorists, and dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide bombers have been dispatched from there.
On Wednesday, the United States, United Nations, Russia and European Union issued a joint statement calling on Israel to pull out immediately from Palestinian cities. The statement also called on both sides to implement a cease-fire, and urged Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to do everything possible to prevent terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued the statement following a meeting in Madrid on Wednesday with Powell, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Josep Pique, the foreign minister of Spain, which currently holds the rotating E.U. presidency.
In his statement, Annan called on Israel to respect international humanitarian law.
Israeli officials expressed concern Tuesday that images from the refugee camp showing Israeli tanks tearing down walls to get through narrow alleyways, along with reports of dead bodies strewn in the streets, would draw international condemnation.
The officials stressed that the IDF is fighting armed Palestinians, not massacring innocent civilians.
The officials also said the army had given assurances that it would not fire on rescue workers coming to clear the dead and wounded, but that Palestinian ambulances nonetheless were refusing to remove the casualties — to score public relations points, the Israeli officials said.
Meanwhile, attempts were continuing on the diplomatic front.
Powell said he’d meet with Arafat later this week as part of efforts to reach a cease-fire.
Powell made the announcement Tuesday in Cairo, the second stop in his Middle East peacemaking mission. He was in Morocco a day earlier.
Powell told reporters the United States welcomed Israel’s withdrawal from Tulkarm and Kalkilya and hoped it was “the beginning of the end” of the Israeli operation.
At the same time, Powell said U.S. officials “know it is difficult to disengage that quickly when people are locked” in combat.
Speaking Wednesday, Powell denied speculation that the suicide bombing near Haifa had derailed his peace effort even before arriving in Israel.
Also Wednesday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush would “remain persistent” in efforts to get Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.
Fleischer also told reporters that Bush has no plans to withhold U.S. aid to Israel if Sharon refuses to withdraw troops.
When a reporter spoke of Sharon’s refusal to heed Bush’s demands for a withdrawal, Fleischer said, “Welcome to the Middle East.”
Fleischer also reiterated that the United States sees Palestinian suicide bombers as terrorists, not freedom fighters.
A similar view was voiced Wednesday by the European Union, which called on Arafat to stop describing suicide bombers as martyrs and clearly condemn them as terrorists.
However, E.U. lawmakers also voted for new measures to pressure Israel to stop its military operation.
Meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, the European Parliament approved a non-binding resolution calling on E.U. governments to impose an arms embargo on Israel and suspend the E.U. association agreement with Israel, which governs trade and political ties between Israel and the European bloc.
Israelis, however, are giving Sharon widespread backing for the offensive.
A recent Jerusalem Post poll found that 72 percent of Israelis support the wide-scale military operation, and 36 percent favor the expulsion of Arafat.