Palestinians recoiling from suicide bombs

Questions about the effectiveness of this kind of attack have grown in the past few years, observers say.

In 2002, a group of Palestinian intellectuals ran ads in local newspapers condemning suicide attacks. And a December 2004 survey taken by the Palestinian Center for Polling and Survey Research found that support for attacks inside Israel dropped to 49 percent from 54 percent in 2003.

Riad Malki, the head of Panorama, a Palestinian nongovernmental organization promoting democratization, says the indicators of the change have not always been clear, but Abbas's January election as the successor of Yasser Arafat helped crystallize that shift in opinion.

"Abbas has made it clear that these attacks are not conducive for realizing Palestinian rights,'' he says. "People feel that after so many years of intifada, there's an opening for peace. The moment that people start connecting these attacks to their national interests, and their livelihoods, that is an indication that the shift is genuine.''

To be sure, few militants are disavowing suicide attacks completely. Ghazi Hamad, the editor of the Hamas weekly, Al Risala, explained that while the militant organization was committed to maintaining calm, it disagreed with Abbas's characterization of the bomber as a saboteur.

"No one will agree with him about this,'' he said. "The resistance cannot be stopped totally.''

Hani Masri, a Palestinian political analyst, says that withdrawal of support for bombings among Islamic militants is a tactical change rather than a deep-rooted belief. He cautions that the Palestinian uprising will not rid itself of the suicide culture until the Islamic militants disavow it also. "It can't be completed without Hamas and Islamic Jihad," he says.

To Israeli ears, the criticism coming from the Palestinian mainstream falls short. "The Palestinians have got to change their formula that the terrorist attack is wrong because it contradicts the Palestinian national interest,'' says Shmuel Bar, a Middle East expert at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. "The reason for condemning a terrorist attack is because you don't go and kill civilians.''

And yet, on the streets of central Ramallah, unusually open criticism of the Tel Aviv bombing could be heard. Subheil Thannous, a jewelry retailer, says Palestinians are ready to make a break with the past. "People want to forget about these attacks. Enough,'' he says. "Now we want to change.''

Back in the fugitives' dorm room, the Aqsa fighters said they would respect the public sentiment and hold their fire. But they also warned of another escalation of the public uprising - a third Intifada.

That ambivalence may explain Abu Yazan's sentiment toward the Tel Aviv suicide bomber. It was OK, he concluded, to condemn him as a saboteur, but "in God's eyes, he is a martyr."

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