MIDDLE EAST: The scene was appallingly familiar. Chunks of human flesh on the tarmac. Push-chairs and kids' schoolbags, with no one to claim them. Bodies hurriedly covered with plastic sheeting where they had fallen. The question remained whether Israel's response would also be familiar, David Horovitz writes
The immediate aftermath was the familiar horror, as well: relatives frantically calling their loved ones, and those who got no reply converging on the bomb site and on the hospitals, frantically screaming the names of their husbands and wives, sons and daughters.
The question last night - after the second suicide bombing in Jerusalem in two days left seven Israelis dead - was whether Israel's response would also be familiar, or would constitute a departure from what, over 21 months of intifada conflict, has become a norm: incursions into Palestinian cities, mass arrests, fighting and fatalities, and an ultimate withdrawal under international pressure.
A statement released by the office of Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, appeared to indicate that this time would be different.
Issued before last night's blast, in the wake of the Tuesday suicide-bombing which killed 19 Israelis, it stated that the army would henceforth respond to such attacks by "capturing territories of the Palestinian Authority" - retaking, that is, parts of the areas that Israel had handed over to the control of President Yasser Arafat under the "Oslo B" accords of September 1995.
Mr Natan Sharansky, a deputy prime minister, was adamant last night that if a permanent reconquest of Palestinian cities was deemed necessary to thwart the attacks, no amount of international pressure would deter the government from authorising this.
"We wanted very much to have a partner with whom we could fight terrorism," he said.
"Unfortunately he (Mr Arafat) turned into the biggest promoter of these terrorist attacks. Now we're going to fight terror by establishing military control wherever. If we need a constant presence of our army in Jenin, Nablus and other cities, that is what we're going to do."
Other hard-liners demanded still harsher measures: Mr Tsahi Hanegbi, the Environment Minister, for instance, pressed for the reinvasion of all Palestinian Authority areas, and the deportation of all senior Palestinian officials and the families of suicide bombers.
But Mr Sharon's moderate Labour party coalition partners spoke in very different tones.
Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Labour leader and Minister of Defence, insisted yesterday he had not approved the long-term reconquest of Palestinian areas, and he would not instruct the army to take such action.
Mr Haim Ramon, another senior Labour figure, said it would result in Israel, intolerably, "ruling over 3½ million Palestinians".
Palestinian leaders intensified the criticism. A PA minister, Mr Saeb Erekat, said the Israeli prime minister's statement confirmed his long-term assertion that Mr Sharon was bent on reimposing a full occupation.
The Palestinian Information Minister, Mr Yasser Abed-Rabbo, accused Israel of "using terror as a pretext" to prevent Palestinian independence. And a top adviser to Mr Arafat, Mr Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, declared that Israel's policy shift now legitimised "all sorts of resistance".
Yesterday morning's edition of the Palestinian daily Al-Quds carried a full-page advertisement, signed by 55 prominent Palestinians including Hanan Ashrawi and Sari Nusseibeh, calling for an end to the killing of civilians inside sovereign Israel. "Stop pushing our youth to carry out these attacks," it urged the orchestrators of the suicide bombings. "These attacks do not achieve progress toward achieving our freedom and independence."
Last night's blast underlined the irrelevance of even that conditional plea for an end to violence - as the Bush administration was also forced to acknowledge.
A White House spokesman announced that President Bush would not now deliver a speech setting out a new Middle East vision - in which he was reportedly intending to call for "provisional" Palestinian statehood - because he preferred to wait for "the right time, when it will do the most good ".