After bombings, a grim routine

Other police also ensure that no other attackers or explosive devices are in the area. Sometimes bombers strike in pairs; at other times those responding to an attack come under fire; on still other occasions car bombings have followed suicide attacks.

Intelligence and forensics experts immediately begin to determine the identity of the bomber. Thursday morning, says Kleiman, the police knew Abu Hilayel was responsible within an hour after the 7:20 a.m. attack.

The bus company removes the bombed bus. After the area has been scoured for human remains, clean-up crews come in to clear broken glass and other material and to wash the streets. Thursday's was the first such attack in Jerusalem in four months, but it took only three hours before the area where the bombing occurred was rinsed clean, with traffic moving on the street.

"If every site left a scar on the street," says Kleiman, "it would do heavy damage to the morale of the people." Cleaning up "is part of the war against terrorism," he says.

In Bethlehem, a few hours after the attack, people began anticipating Israeli retaliation - another aspect of Israel's war on terror. People left their homes to buy food, gasoline, and medicine.

This whirl of preparation also had an air of routine. "After every operation," says grocery-store owner Abdullah Hilo, using the Palestinian euphemism for a suicide attack, "there is an incursion." He was loading a sack of potatoes into the back of his car - his third shopping trip of the morning.

Gen. Ala Husni, commander of Bethlehem's police force, said in an interview that he was "very disturbed" by the bombing. "This young man goes to do this thing," he says, "and he takes Bethlehem with him, the future and destiny of Bethlehem, and perhaps of the Palestinian Authority."

During the past two years, Israel has held the PA responsible for suicide bombings, although it has never been clear to what extent Palestinian officials can control the actions of militant groups.

General Husni stresses the need for some sort of "political horizon" to lend legitimacy to Palestinian efforts to stop violence against Israel.

In the mid-1990s, he says, "we were able to paralyze Hamas and Islamic Jihad ... because there was a political process."

There is no shortage of despair on either side. A math and economics teacher named Jacob stood by the bus stop where Thursday's bombing took place, watching the clean up. He lives around the corner and takes the same bus to work.

Not Thursday. He heard the blast, called his son to say he was OK, and decided to take the day off. "There's no solution," he says. "We will go into [Palestinian area] and do something and they will answer."

As he spoke, two more rituals occurred. People brought candles to set up a memorial at the bus stop and began to pray. In the street, young men from the neighborhood gathered into a group. They began to shout: "Death to the Arabs."

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