Twin Suicide Bombers Still Enigmas, Israel Says

JERUSALEM —  Amid threats of new suicide bombings, Israeli officials said Tuesday that they are still struggling to determine the identities and allegiance of the two men who carried out last week’s attack on a produce market here.

The July 30 bombings have thrust Israeli and Palestinian peacemaking to a new low, setting off waves of angry recriminations from both sides that threaten to swamp the 4-year-old dialogue. The crisis has also prompted a flurry of diplomacy, with Israel’s foreign minister flying to Egypt for emergency talks Tuesday and Jordan’s crown prince scheduled to visit Jerusalem today.

The fragility of the peace process was underlined Tuesday with a new threat from the militant Islamic group Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the Jerusalem attack in a leaflet last week. In a statement faxed to the Reuters news agency, the military wing of Hamas said that it would launch a “chain of martyrdom attacks” inside Israel because the Jewish state had not met a Sunday deadline to release all Palestinian prisoners.

Some Israeli and Palestinian officials have cast doubt on the authenticity of the recent statements, saying they are not typical of previous ones by Hamas. Nonetheless, Israeli officials said they believe Hamas was behind the twin Jerusalem bombings, which killed 13 people in addition to the two bombers and wounded 170 others.

The group is believed responsible for attacks that have killed scores of Israelis in recent years. As yet, however, Israel has no proof in this incident, a senior military official said Tuesday.

The bombers’ fingerprints and faces, which were largely intact after the explosions, are unknown to authorities here. No relatives have come forward to claim the bodies. And mourning tents, often erected at the homes of perpetrators’ family members after previous suicide attacks, have not appeared in Palestinian communities.

Israeli officials say, at least publicly, that they do not yet know whether the bombers came from Arab villages inside Israel, from the West Bank or Gaza Strip or from abroad. They say they do not even know for sure whether the explosive used was TNT, which is generally used by Hamas and another militant Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad, or the more powerful RDX, which has been used by the Iranian-backed Lebanese organization Hezbollah.

“The investigation hasn’t ruled out anything,” said the military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But others pointed to similarities between last week’s attack and previous bombings for which Hamas has claimed responsibility--including the design of the bombs and the fact that they were studded with nails.

Carmi Gillon, a former head of Israel’s General Security Service, known here as Shin Bet, said it is unusual but not unprecedented for suicide bombers to remain unidentified nearly a week after an attack. He said one reason might be that the two men entered Israel from another country, which could explain why they were not known to Israeli authorities as members of a militant group.

Or, Gillon said, perhaps the people behind such attacks “have learned from their experience that they shouldn’t announce who they are and what their reasons were” for fear of arrest by Israeli or Palestinian security forces.

Since the market explosions, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a withering assault on Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and his government, alleging that they bear the primary responsibility because they failed to stop the attack.

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordecai said Tuesday that the Palestinian Authority is cooperating with Israel in the investigation of last week’s bombing and has made some arrests. But he and others said that the Palestinians, despite pressure from Israel and the U.S., have done little to arrest any militant leaders, collect large numbers of weapons or crack the groups’ infrastructure.

In response to the bombings, Israel has imposed a nearly total closure of Palestinian-ruled territories, including border crossings to Jordan and Egypt; has cut the flow of tax revenues to the Palestinians; and has threatened to mount commando strikes into Palestinian-ruled territory to make arrests.

Arafat, speaking to reporters Tuesday in Jordan after a meeting with King Hussein, said the bombers “came from abroad,” citing information he said was gathered by Palestinian and Israeli security officials.

Palestinians have criticized Israel for imposing sanctions and blaming Arafat even before the identity of the bombers and their motivations have been established.

Meanwhile, the potential for more trouble appeared on the horizon Tuesday. The Israeli activist group Peace Now released a report claiming that more than 44,000 new homes are planned in Jewish settlements throughout the occupied territories. Palestinians, who hope to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, see such settlements as an obstacle to peace.

Spokesmen for settler organizations denied the report. The Defense Ministry, which must give final approval to building in the territories, had no immediate comment.