OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 1 August — A bomb ripped through a busy university cafeteria in Jerusalem yesterday, killing seven people, five of them foreigners. Some 70 people were injured. At least one of the dead was an American woman, while another victim was a Frenchman.
Responsibility for the lunchtime blast at Hebrew University at Mount Scopus was claimed by Hamas which said in a statement that it was in retaliation for the Gaza raid that killed its military leader, Salah Shehade, and nine Palestinian children.
Many of those in the cafe at the Frank Sinatra International Students’ Center were foreigners on summer courses. There were some Palestinians, too. Witnesses said the bomb appeared to have been stashed in a plastic sack. It exploded shortly before 2 p.m. and gutted the eatery. The blast sent people fleeing in panic. Victims staggered out of the cafeteria, located in an Israeli enclave of Arab East Jerusalem.
Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin said: “When Israel bombs a civilian building full of women and children and kills 15 people, this is the response they should expect.”
US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson canceled talks in Gaza with Sheikh Yassin. “We canceled that meeting to show respect for the victims and their families,” Jackson said after turning around at the Israel-Gaza border. “We feel no useful purpose would be served to meet under the current conditions,” he said. Jackson is currently on a peace mission to the occupied territories at the head of an inter-faith delegation.
The Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat condemned the attack. So did US President George W. Bush. Bush vowed the bombing would not undermine his “vision of peace” for the Middle East.
“There are clearly killers who hate the thought of peace and therefore are willing to take their hatred to all kinds of places, including a university,” he told reporters after a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
“This country condemns that kind of killing, and we send our deepest sympathy to the students and their families,” Bush said. “I also want to make it clear to the killers they won’t stop us from rallying the world to fight their kind of terror, nor will they stop us from having a vision of peace.”
Before the blast, Israel’s Security Cabinet decided to expel to the Gaza Strip a relative of a West Bank resident who had attacked Israelis, political sources said after the meeting. The man will have 12 hours to appeal the decision, the sources said.
The online edition of the Israeli daily Haaretz said the man in question was a relative of a Palestinian who ambushed a bus near the Jewish settlement of Emmanuel on July 17, killing nine people.
The decision emerged as the Security Cabinet met to consider new ways of tackling bombings a day after a teenager blew himself up in Jerusalem, injuring seven Israelis. If the expulsion goes ahead, it will be the first time the controversial measure, which has been criticized at home and abroad, has been used by Israel since the start of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in September 2000.
An Israeli government spokesman accused Arafat of “encouraging” the rash of attacks to avoid carrying out reforms in his own administration. “This is an attempt by the Palestinian Authority to try to avoid making the necessary reforms. It is Yasser Arafat who directly encourages this,” Avi Pazner said.
The Palestinian Authority retorted, “The leadership considers Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as being responsible for this cycle of terror. This cycle of terror is a result of policies that are adopted by Sharon’s government.”
