NABLUS, West Bank, 3 November 2004 — Israeli forces razed the home of a teenage suicide bomber yesterday and those of two Palestinian militants who sent him on an attack that killed three people in Tel Aviv, the army and witnesses said. Israel beefed up security in Tel Aviv yesterday after the bombing in its commercial capital punctured hopes that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s absence could slow the cycle of violence.
The Israeli Army also sealed off the West Bank city of Nablus, where the 16-year-old bomber lived in the Askar refugee camp. Palestinians said the city was quiet. Amer Abdel Rahim, a high school dropout, blew himself up in Tel Aviv’s open-air Carmel Market on Monday.
Military sources said troops overnight demolished the Abdel Rahim family home and those of two militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said by the army to have recruited and sent him. The PFLP is an armed group within Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.
The three demolitions left 29 people homeless, including the parents and 10 siblings of the bomber. Israel typically demolishes the homes of militants linked to suicide attacks in what it calls a deterrence policy. Palestinians and human rights groups condemn the practice as collective punishment.
Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Arafat’s Fatah political movement, during a raid in Nablus on Monday after the suicide attack, witnesses and medics said. Palestinian medics said Israel had earlier killed a boy of 12 in stone-throwing clashes in Askar. The army said no troops were in the area when the boy was killed.
The Tel Aviv bombing posed a challenge to veteran moderates presiding over Palestinian institutions in Arafat’s absence who have called in the past for a ceasefire to revive peace moves with Israel aimed at Palestinian statehood. Police fanned out across public buildings, markets, bus stations and business centers in Tel Aviv yester. Officers are still hunting for accomplices who are believed to have helped the youth, who came from Nablus in the northern West Bank, to enter Israel’s coastal business hub.
The bomber “had never been to the market where he blew himself up. We are looking at the possibility that a Palestinian who worked there in the past helped him,” Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra told public radio. While Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei condemned the attack for targeting civilians, Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon said it illustrated that “there has been no change in the Palestinian Authority” despite Arafat’s departure to France for hospital treatment.
The first official French medical report on his health has confirmed Arafat does not have leukemia, as aides said the 75-year-old, who is known to be suffering from a deficiency of blood platelets, is recovering. “The first tests have allowed us to eliminate the leukemia hypothesis,” said Palestinian representative in France Leila Shahid, reading out the text of the medical assessment.
“The president is improving. Doctors are more convinced that the situation is under control,” Arafat’s economic adviser Mohamed Rashid said. “He is getting back to his normal activity slowly.”
Some 10,000 mourners packed the streets of Nablus at the funerals for the three yesterday, chanting demands for revenge attacks in Jerusalem. Dozens of Al-Aqsa fighters unleashed volleys of gunfire into the air, without bothering to mask their faces.
Some 3,000 pupils protested yesterday against a strike by local staff of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) that has shut dozens of West Bank schools and clinics for the past three weeks. The youngsters barred access to the main highway through the Biblical town of Bethlehem, placing large garbage dumpsters in the middle of the road, an AFP reporter said.
