KFAR YAAVETS, Israel, July 8 (UPI) -- The blast sent red tiles flying off the roof, ran jagged cracks through the walls, and dismembered the suicide bomber's body, spattering flesh and blood on a neighbor's wall in Kfar Yaavetz, northeast of Tel Aviv.
Wednesday night's attack became the first suicide bombing since the Palestinian organizations accepted a hudna, an Islamic-type temporary cease-fire. Its victim was a 65-year-old woman, Mazal Afari, who emigrated from Yemen at the age of 12. She was waiting for her husband who was on his way back from evening prayers in a synagogue up the road.
An Islamic Jihad faction in the northern West Bank town of Jenin assumed responsibility for the attack. It released filmed footage of the unshaven bomber, 22 years old Ahmad Yihya, a green bandana around his head. He read out a statement demanding that Israel release all prisoners "without exception or else the reaction will come with God's help."
It is not clear why Yihya chose Afari's home, why he entered it, and why his bomb exploded in the living room.
Kfar Yaavets is within walking distance from an Israeli-Arab town, Kalanswa, and a short distance from the West Bank. He might have reached the village walking across the fields and past the cypress trees.
Police said he might have wanted one of the cars, parked under the Afari's house, beside several children's tricycles.
What happened inside the house may never be known. Only the assassin and his victim were there, three meters (about 10 feet) apart, police said.
What is clear is that when an 8- to 10-kilogram (22-pound) bomb exploded, fragments punctured a gas cylinder that caused a second, powerful blast. Police initially suspect a gas balloon accidentally exploded.
Harel Levi, 42, a neighbor, was among the first to rush over. He said they searched the house for 20 minutes until they came across a man's leg. "We didn't know what it was because we were looking for a woman," he told United Press International.
Hundreds of mourners gathered in the tree-shaded street outside the bombed home, Wednesday afternoon. A relative, his voice choking with emotion mixed calls for quiet dignity with a eulogy and prayers in a mournful, distinct Yemenite accent. People who knew Mazal Afari praised her devotion to a senior citizens club she managed in the village of some 500 people.
In Gaza, Islamic Jihad spokesman Mohammad al-Hindi said they were still committed to the hudna. The suicide bombing was an exceptional event, he told a television crew.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are considered fairly disciplined organizations. However, a Western diplomat Tuesday told reporters -- on condition he not be identified -- that he expected problems in the northern West Bank where neighborhoods are political organizational units.
The Israeli defense establishment seems ready to give the Palestinian Authority time to get a grip on the militants. The number of intelligence alerts of planned attacks has dropped from more than 50 to 29, a security source told UPI.
At this stage, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas
"Seriously intends to stop terror," Israeli chief of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevy-Farkash, told Channel 1 TV.
Elements within the Palestinian leadership associated with President Yasser Arafat are reportedly hampering his efforts. He is trying to get rid of them and the quarrel has led Abbas to postpone Wednesday's meeting with Sharon, Farkash said.
It would be a mistake to pressure Abbas to immediately dismantle a terror infrastructure, the Israeli general added.
"Pressure on Abu Mazen to immediately deal with terrorist infrastructures would mean an immediate collapse of the cease fire. ... You can't make achievements in one day. He has to rebuild the (security) organizations. One has to give him time and not give up," Farkash argued.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz favored Israeli restraint. Israel "is determined" to continue with the peace process. "One has to give the process a chance," Mofaz said.
However Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom Wednesday met U.S. presidential envoy John Wolf and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer, and phoned European foreign ministers, demanding the Palestinians meet their obligation to dismantle the militants' infrastructure.
Shalom told Channel 1 TV Israel is checking "the possibility" the Palestinian Authority knew of the impending attack at Kfar Yaavets and did not tell the Israelis.
"The cease-fire is a ticking bomb. ... If you (the Palestinian Authority) won't take a strategic decision to dismantle terrorist infrastructure, there will be no process," Shalom warned.
The statements suggest differences among Israeli leaders. According to the Western diplomat, Sharon had told the United States that if the Palestinians are serious in their fight against militants, Israel would not make an issue of a few failures to prevent attacks.
However such attacks could shorten the time the sides have to solve problems, the diplomat maintained.
A public opinion poll published in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, last Friday, showed Israelis highly skeptical of the intra-Palestinian Hudna in the occupied territories, and the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire agreements that relate to Gaza and Bethlehem.
Asked whether they believe the Palestinians would make a "big effort" to keep the cease-fire, 62 percent of the respondents said "no" and 37 percent said "yes."
Yet 63 percent of the respondents supported the "road map" for peace, against 25 percent who opposed it.
Outside the piles of rubble in Kfar Yaavets, none of the interviewees expressed confidence in a cease-fire.
"We're being led astray," said Menahem Gabra, 60, a former teacher and a relative of the Afaris. "It's difficult to believe anything will come out of this Hudna. It's just designed to enable them to get stronger."
Yitzhak Girassi, 42, who runs a boarding school, said the Arabs understand only harsh force, and Sharon failed his duties.
Israel should expel the bombers' relatives, Girassi said. "When 20,000 such families will leave the area, the others will stand at attention," he added.
Standing outside a house she has rented beside the Afari's, artist Ronit Lev, 50, surveyed the wreckage, her cheek in the palm of her hand.
"It could have been me," she said.
Lev moved to Kfar Yaavetz seeing quiet to engage in her art, and now she is frightened.
"Maybe the Palestinian majority wants the hudna, but the extremist groups have too many fanatics ... and I sense the extremists' fire," she said.
Her home is along a path to Kfar Yaavets. She said the security officer told her the attacker might have approached her house first but it was dark, the shutters were down, so he probably turned to the Afari's, which was always lit.
