Seven more Israelis die in rush-hour bomb at bus stop

Seven people were killed and 35 were wounded yesterday in the second Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem within 36 hours.

With the city still reeling from the most deadly suicide attack for six years – 20 people killed on Tuesday when they were blown up in a bus – the bombers struck again in the early evening rush hour with an attack on a crowd of people at a bus shelter. The atrocity came less than a day after the Israeli government issued a statement on Tuesday's bombing, saying it would reoccupy Palestinian-administered areas if there were further attacks and remain until the violence ended.

Last night, after 27 deaths in Jerusalem in two days, Israel began to act on its threat. Tanks and armoured vehicles entered Ramallah from two directions, heading towards the town centre where the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has his headquarters.

Israeli helicopters struck targets in Gaza, hitting metal workshops believed to be used for manufacturing weapons. Thirteen Palestinians were injured.

Yesterday's suicide attack was at a busy junction in French Hill, in an area close to the Israeli-occupied Arab side of Jerusalem, and served notice that the Palestinian attacks have resumed in full force despite the barriers the Israelis have been erecting to separate Arabs from Jews, and despite mass arrests, curfews, repeated raids, an economic blockade and the biggest military offensive by Israel in the West Bank since 1967.

Israeli police said the bomber jumped out of a car and began running. An Israeli border policeman approached him, and he detonated the device. The junction has been attacked several times by suicide bombers in the past 21 months.

The attack was claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group linked to the Fatah faction of Mr Arafat.

The city had been on high alert for several days, after police were warned that several bombers were on the loose. The attack launched a new round of the now familiar finger-pointing by both sides. Israel always holds Mr Arafat and his Palestinian Authority directly responsible for such attacks, and it did so again yesterday.

And these days the Palestinian leadership, which routinely condemns attacks on civilians, always argues that Israel is now responsible for making its citizens secure because the Israeli army controls the occupied territories, and has smashed the infrastructure of the Palestinian security forces.

The Israelis also accuse the Palestinians of destroying any chance of returning to the peace process.

The Palestinians reply by saying there is no prospect of peace negotiations because Ariel Sharon is systematically blocking them by creating an increasingly long list of preconditions. And so the cycle continues.

Last night President George Bush again delayed a speech in which he was to spell out a formula for peace. But with no prospects of political progress, the Israeli government and its occupying army, and the extremist Palestinian groups, are likely to continue to resort to the ruthless use of force.