Bombs Shake Israel Peace Attacks Fuel Fears Of Coexistence; Two Americans Among 26 Victims

The No. 18 bus had just stopped for a red light Sunday morning when, too quickly for eyes to follow or minds to grasp, the vehicle and its contents exploded into gruesome debris.

A fireball and a twisted steel skeleton were all that remained. Glass, flesh, upholstery and great hunks of aluminum were flung hundreds of yards in the 6:45 a.m. blast, spraying through car and apartment windows and onto roofs.

A second blast ripped through a hitchhiking post for soldiers less than an hour later and 45 miles away in the coastal city of Ashkelon. Together, they killed at least 26 people, including two Americans.

Authorities identified the dead Americans as Matthew Mitchell Eisenfeld, 25, of West Hartford, Conn., who was studying at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, and Sara Duker, 22, of Teaneck, N.J., who was studying at Hebrew University.

Scores were wounded, and at least 56 people remained in hospitals Sunday.

The bombings killed more people than any other attack on Israelis since the signing of a peace deal with the Palestine Liberation Organization in fall 1993.

Anonymous callers from Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, said the bombings were meant to avenge the Jan. 5 slaying of Hamas bomb-builder Yehiya Ayash with a booby-trapped cellular telephone. The callers also noted that Sunday marked the second anniversary of the Hebron massacre, in which a Jewish settler gunned down 29 praying Muslims.

For Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who has called early national elections for May 29, the attacks threaten to undermine support for the peace process and his bid to retain office.

Surveying the grisly scene of the Jerusalem attack, a heavily guarded Peres was booed and jeered by an angry crowd. “Peres go home!” they shouted, and “Peres is next!” - a chilling reference to the last prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who was slain Nov. 4 by a right-wing Jew who said he wanted to stop Rabin’s peacemaking.

Peres vowed that the attacks would not derail the pursuit of peace.

“Terrorism, however painful, will not determine our fate,” Peres said.

The attacks came after a six-month lull in violence and presented the Israeli government with a familiar and difficult balancing act: seeking to assure Israelis they will be safe while taking the needed political risks to pursue a final peace settlement with the Palestinians.

Up to now, Peres has maintained a comfortable lead over his challenger, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. But terror attacks such as Sunday’s bombings could persuade voters in the middle of Israel’s political spectrum that going ahead with Peres’ peace agenda is too risky.

Police said the 22-pound bomb carried onto the No. 18 bus in Jerusalem was packed with nails and ball bearings to make it more deadly when it exploded.

The Ashkelon bomb, which was detonated 50 minutes later and killed two people, was similarly built and carried by a Palestinian in an Israeli army uniform who walked into a large group of soldiers gathering to ask for rides at a southern highway junction.

In Jerusalem, Jewish burial society searchers removed bloody human body parts from trees. On a thirdfloor balcony on Shaare Yisrael Street, a long city block from the bus, a young woman swept her third-floor balcony obsessively, her face contorted and weeping.

PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who once avoided comment about Hamas violence, sought out reporters Sunday in Gaza. He reacted forcefully when one of the reporters, using a commonplace Palestinian euphemism, asked his reaction to the “military operation” against Israel.

“It is not a ‘military operation’; it is a terrorist operation,” he said. “I condemn it completely and I condemn any power behind it. It is not only against civilians but against the whole peace process.”

Michel Danino, 27, told Israel Television he was driving past the Ashkelon site when “suddenly I heard a terrible explosion,” and a young woman soldier was flung through his rear window into his car. The soldier, Hofit Ayash, 20, was one of the two killed there.

“It was a horrible scene,” Danino said. “There was lots of blood. People were screaming for help.”