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CNN Live Saturday

Suicide Bomber Blows Up Shopping Center in Jewish Settlement

Aired February 16, 2002 - 18:09   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Turning now to the Middle East, a familiar scene of destruction there as a suicide bomber targets a Jewish shopping center, setting off a deadly explosion.

And CNN's Jerrold Kessel has more on that action and reaction to the violence.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was soon after the end of the Jewish sabbath when the bomber struck. Many young people from the settlement had come out for a pizza in their shopping center. This was the first such suicide bombing in a West Bank settlement. The grisly scenes, though, the same Israelis had come to recognize from previous such attacks in the heart of their cities, death and destruction, anger and pain.

The attack capped a day teeming with violent incidents.

In the Palestinian town of Janin, calls for revenge as a crowd gathered following the killing of a prominent activist of the radical Islamic group Hamas's military wing. An explosion ripped through his parked car as he approached it.

Israel maintains a studied silence on this incident. Palestinians have no doubt it was Israel's work, another assassination of a man on the Israeli army's wanted list.

Israel is threatening further escalation after, it says, Hamas upped the stakes by launching more rockets of the kind shown here in a Hamas promotional video of its homemade Katham (ph) missiles. The latest rockets again landed harmlessly in an Israel communal farm close to the Gaza border.

Inside Gaza, three Palestinians, two teenager and a policeman, were killed in shooting exchanges after another Israeli incursion into a Palestinian-controlled area, this time the takeover of a regional security headquarters. Each Palestinian attack reshapes the simmering dissent within Israel, but increasingly there are questions now about military tactics and over the Sharon government's strategy of pushing for a military solution without a parallel political agenda.

Now the demand is for urgent political action instead of more military action, several thousand left-wing Israelis marching through Tel Aviv and calling for the end to the occupation, the first serious protest since the start of the bloody confrontation a year and a half ago.

UNIDENTIFIED ISRAELI: The demand from the government to come up with a real plan or a real negotiating plan, because if they don't do it, I think that more and more Israelis are not going to accept the policies of this government.

KESSEL: One of the highlight speakers at the concluding rally was leading Palestinian moderate Suri Naseba (ph).

(on camera): The turnout here does suggest that something has changed for some Israelis, but it's a long, long way for this to become the dominant Israeli voice, especially given the current climate of the conflict.

(voice-over): Jerrold Kessel, CNN, Tel Aviv.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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