The bomb blast in Megiddo yesterday will alter President Hosni Mubarak's agenda in the United States,reports Graham Usher from Jerusalem Click to view caption With all eyes on Washington -- and the anticipated fruit or otherwise from President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister's Ariel Sharon's meetings with George Bush this and next week -- a Palestinian car bomb left 16 Israelis dead and dozens wounded at Megiddo junction in northern Israel yesterday. It is an attack that will hurt President Mubarak's agenda far more than it will hurt Ariel Sharon's. The bombing occurred early on Wednesday morning when a car packed with explosives ripped through a passenger bus, killing soldiers and civilians alike. Eyewitnesses described a blast so powerful it threw the vehicle into two somersaults and left human flesh so charred as to be unrecognisable. Islamic Jihad said one of its "seekers of martyrdom" was responsible for the attack. "On the 35th anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem we say again to the leadership of the enemy: we will continue to smash Sharon's Defensive Shield [codename for the Israeli army's six-week West Bank military offensive in April and May], and the Zionist entity will enjoy no safety or security while it occupies our land, Palestine," the Islamist group said in a statement. With equal predictability, the Palestinian Authority denounced the attack. "The PA reiterates its condemnation of the blowing up of an Israeli bus in the Megiddo area which led to victims among its passengers. The leadership announces it had no connection to the attack," it said within hours of the carnage. The disclaimer is unlikely to do either the Authority or its leader much good. Israeli government spokesmen immediately held Yasser Arafat and the PA responsible for the attack, insisting that neither had "lifted a finger" to curb the operations of groups like Islamic Jihad. Israel's security cabinet met for three hours on Wednesday morning but no decisions were made public. Some operational decisions were taken, however, with Palestinians reporting that a column of tanks had entered Jenin and was advancing toward its devastated refugee camp. Jenin is a few kilometers east of Megiddo. The camp was the site of some the fiercest combat during Operation Defensive Shield, leaving 23 Israeli soldiers and at least 52 Palestinians dead and 4,000 without homes. It is unclear whether the car bomber came from there, since Jihad withheld his name "for security reasons". Will Sharon go further, and act to remove Arafat once and for all? He may not need to. The attack will certainly strengthen the hand of those in the Israeli government who want the army to remain permanently within the PA cities. It will also strengthen Sharon's stance vis- à-vis the Americans that there can be no movement on the diplomatic front unless and until there is a cease-fire and "sweeping reforms" of the PA "at all levels". This applies to the Egyptian initiative, rumoured to include the provision that a Palestinian state be declared "theoretically" early next year as a prelude to final status negotiations on Jerusalem, refugees, borders and settlement extending over the next three years. Sharon is resolutely opposed to both timetables, preferring instead "facts on the ground" rather than calendars. As for Arafat his position could hardly be worse. His insistence to CIA chief George Tenet on Tuesday that neither reforms nor his security forces could operate as long as the Israeli army was in occupation of West Bank Palestinian cities will now fall on even stonier ground than previously. The pressure will rather be on him to implement actions that cannot be fulfilled, given the PA's current state of disarray. In such circumstances Sharon hardly needs to act against the Palestinian leader (which is not to say he will not do so). He has already set in train the silent but sure destruction of leadership, authority and jurisdiction. This has always been the Israeli leader's preferred road for erasing the institutions and realities bequeathed him by the now dead Oslo accords. And each bombing inside Israel allows him another stride along the road and toward Israel's unfettered control of the West Bank. Related stories: Pushing for statehood Reform under siege 16 - 22 May 2002 Arafat: free but increasingly isolated 16 - 22 May 2002 Blowing in the wind 9 - 15 May 2002 See INVASION 2 - 8 May 2002
