Palestinian attacks signal failure of military offensive

Only a few weeks after Israel wound down its military offensive in the West Bank, which was launched to destroy the infrastructure of violent nationalist groups, Palestinian attacks on civilians are back with a vengeance, including six assaults or attempted assaults in as many days.

In the early hours of yesterday, 22 days after the Israeli armed forces ended the siege of Yasser Arafat's headquarters, a security guard in Tel Aviv opened fire on an explosives-laden car heading towards a nightclub, foiling a third bombing in the metropolitan area in little more than 24 hours.

These included a remote-control bomb, which detonated on a tanker in Israel's largest fuel depot on Thursday morning in what Israeli officials said was an attempt to blow up the depot and cause thousands of casualties in the densely populated area. The automatic sprinkler system and workers swiftly put out the fire.

Israeli officials said the guard who shot at the car yesterday, causing pipe-bombs inside to explode as it was approaching, averted more bloodshed at the Studio 49 club, where several hundred people were dancing. After shooting the driver in his vehicle, the guard, Eli Federman, 36, approached him and killed him by shooting him at close range in the head.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militia claimed responsibility for the attack and identified the would-be bomber as Amer Shkokani, from Ramallah in the West Bank. In a videotaped statement, he said he was responding to the killing by Israel of members of the group. On Wednesday, the Israeli army assassinated three al-Aqsa men in Nablus.

That assassination, as well as daily raids by Israeli forces into the Gaza Strip and West Bank villages and towns – including Tulkarm yesterday, where Palestinians and Israeli soldiers were injured in fighting – are a further sign that the war is flaring anew.

In an effort to keep out the bombers, Israel has tightened its closure of the occupied territories, a move that Palestinian officials say increases the conditions in which extremist groups flourish.

Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, pushed ahead with the recent military offensive, Operation Defensive Shield, despite the urgings of the United States and criticism from abroad that said it would be counterproductive and would increase attacks not end them. Yesterday, his Defence Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said that the offensive had heightened motivation among militants to make attacks, and warned that Israel was facing "waves of suicide bombers".

An Israeli newspaper poll shows that Mr Sharon is enjoying widespread support, with an approval rating of 64 per cent, buoyed by the recent military offensive and his decision to throw the ultra-Orthodox Shas party out of his government. But he will be aware that his popularity is unlikely to last if suicide bombers start claiming heavy casualties.

* A British woman was being questioned by Israeli security agents yesterday after traces of explosives were found in her car, which had Canadian diplomatic plates. She was detained at the Erez crossing on the edge of the Gaza Strip amid a dispute between Israel and the international diplomatic community over a new decision to search diplomatic cars going in and out of Gaza.