Israel fights to dismantle Hamas

The deceptive calm created by Israel's firm grip on the Palestinian territories shattered Wednesday afternoon.

Images of a street littered with charred and smoking ruins once again flashed across TV screens here after a massive bombing shredded a bus in a leafy residential neighborhood in the northern port city of Haifa.

The bombing, which killed at least 15 and injured dozens, was the first since early January. It bolsters analysts who argue that Israel's reoccupation of the West Bank, and repeated strikes against the militant group Hamas in Gaza won't end Palestinian violence. Instead, these analysts argue, Israel's actions simply serve to boost militant groups' support, popularity, and determination.

"The harder they are hit, often the more benefit they gain," says Hisham Ahmed, a professor at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank who studies militant groups. "There are short-term losses - infrastructure, financial, human - but after that they tend to capitalize by further mobilizing their constituencies and the public at large."

Local officials at the scene of the bus bombing said a suicide bomber, not an explosive device, was to blame. The bombing, which the Palestinian Authority condemned, is likely to give impetus to a new Israeli initiative to craft an international treaty against suicide bombers and those who incite or support them.

The bombing comes at a time when Israel is being criticized for Palestinian civilian deaths. Israeli Defense Force raids targeting Hamas in Gaza have killed at least 60 since mid-February. The army wants "to keep the terrorists busy running for their lives and not planning the next terrorist attack against us and our soldiers," says army spokeswoman Maj. Sharon Feingold.

But keeping Hamas "under constant pressure, as the army is doing now, is enough to reduce the threat, not eliminate it," says Shlomo Brom, a senior research associate at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. "If there has been quiet, it's the result of Israeli pressure, but the attempts are not stopping - they are foiled by the IDF."

Indeed, while Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi told the press that his group was not responsible for Wednesday's bus bombing, he praised the attack and stressed that Hamas was "not going to give up in the face of daily killing of Palestinians."

The IDF has pursued Hamas with increasing intensity since a land mine planted by the group killed four soldiers riding inside a tank in Gaza on Feb. 15. The Israeli raids have also been stepped up in response to Hamas rocket attacks on Gaza settlements and towns inside Israel proper.

On a raid Monday to arrest Hamas political leader Sheikh Mohammed Taha, Israeli troops killed eight people, including Noha Maqadme, a pregnant mother of 11. Hours after that raid in the densely packed Bureij refugee camp, shock fused with calls for revenge in an example of the way IDF incursions into Gaza may be hardening resistance instead of undermining it.

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