JERUSALEM—The first Palestinian suicide bombing in a year highlighted the challenge facing a U.S. peace push that hinges on convincing Israel that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas can control militants.
"The Army of Palestine", which says it is a unit of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, was the first group to claim responsibility for Monday's attack in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, though al-Aqsa spokesmen in the occupied West Bank denied any involvement.
Hamas's armed wing later said it was responsible for the bombing, which killed an Israeli woman, along with the suicide bomber and another attacker.
The last time Hamas claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing inside Israel was August 2004, when 16 people were killed and 100 wounded in explosions on two buses in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
The Hamas source said the two attackers came from the West Bank city of Hebron, where Abbas's Fatah faction is supposed to hold sway, rather than from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Palestinian and Israeli officials said the bombing would not derail U.S.-backed peace talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the first in seven years to tackle so-called final status issues, including statehood borders.
But Mark Regev, Olmert's spokesman, said the bombing underscored the "primary challenge" facing Abbas to demonstrate that he can exert full control over militant groups.
"This challenge is not only coming from forces outside their political movement," Regev said. "Within the Fatah machine, there are rogue elements."
He cited a December attack, claimed by another splinter group within al-Aqsa, in which two off-duty Israeli soldiers were killed in the West Bank. Hamas and Islamic Jihad also claimed responsibility for the shooting.
Olmert has vowed not to implement any peace deal until Abbas reins in militants, including those in Gaza, where Hamas routed Fatah forces in June.
Command and Control
Monday's attack came just four weeks after Abbas's interior minister asserted that al-Aqsa no longer existed.
In contrast to Hamas's unified command structure, al-Aqsa's decentralisation makes it difficult to control, Palestinian and Western experts say.
Analysts said Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip may have fuelled divisions within Fatah, increasing the number of groups that align themselves, at least temporarily, with Hamas.
Zakaria al-Qaq of al-Quds University said the Army of Palestine's claim of responsibility for the Dimona bombing was designed to put Abbas in a difficult position.
for Israel Bombing
GAZA—Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed a woman in southern Israel on Monday, the first such attack inside Israel claimed by Hamas since 2004, a Hamas source told Reuters.
The source said the two Palestinians who died during the attack in the Israeli town of Dimona came from the West Bank city of Hebron, rather than from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Other details were not immediately available.
The last time Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for suicide bombings inside Israel was August 2004, when 16 people were killed and 100 wounded in explosions on two buses in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
"The message is sharper because it comes from within Fatah," Qaq said. "They have not only lost Gaza, they have lost half of their own party. The leadership will now have a problem explaining: How can it guarantee a comprehensive agreement with the Israelis?"
Nicolas Pelham of the International Crisis Group said Hamas militants in the West Bank had warned they might return to suicide bombings as a tactic in response to Abbas's crackdown on the group's activities there.
"Hamas felt like they were being pushed to the wall in the West Bank," Pelham said. Despite the crackdown, he added, Hamas "still retains its underground network".
Palestinian officials loyal to Abbas says Hamas militants, as well as some al-Aqsa members, have been arrested as part of stepped up efforts to meet security commitments under the Western-backed "road map" peace plan. Israel has yet to meet its own road map obligation to halt all settlement activity.
But Abbas's West Bank-based government has accused Israel of undermining the security crackdown, a charge echoed by U.S. and Western officials who have privately protested Israeli raids and its confiscation of protective gear from Abbas's forces.
Israeli leaders have long asserted that Hamas could take control of the West Bank if Israeli forces withdrew too soon.
A long-delayed U.S. training programme for Abbas's security forces got underway last month but was projected to graduate only 2,000 men by the end of 2008, the timeframe set by U.S. President George W. Bush for reaching an agreement on a Palestinian state.
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