By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 30, 2007

JERUSALEM, Jan. 29 -- A 21-year-old Palestinian from the Gaza Strip blew himself up Monday inside a bakery in the Israeli resort city of Eilat, killing himself and all three people inside.

The morning suicide attack was the first inside Israel in nine months, and it brought sharp condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the White House and leaders of the relatively moderate Fatah faction led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But the governing Hamas movement and Islamic Jihad, a smaller radical group that asserted responsibility for the bombing, called the attack a legitimate response to Israel's occupation of territories that Palestinians envision as part of their future state.

Islamic Jihad officials said the bombing should motivate Palestinian armed groups -- whose partisan fighting in Gaza has killed nearly 30 people in recent days -- to end their differences and unite against Israel.

"This is an important message to the factions," Mohammed el-Hindi, an Islamic Jihad political leader in Gaza, told al-Jazeera satellite television. "We have to remember that we are one nation with one enemy."

Olmert met with military officials following the attack in Eilat, a flashy resort city on the Red Sea whose tourism industry has suffered in the aftermath of Israel's war last summer with the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. It was the first suicide bombing in the city, although Israeli vacationers have been targeted in the past just across the border in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Because there were no survivors inside Lehamim Bakery, located in a residential neighborhood on the edge of Eilat's tourist district, Israeli officials took more than an hour to determine the cause of the 9:40 a.m. explosion.

Police investigators arrived at the bakery, which rescue workers described as a grisly scene, to discover the remnants of an explosives vest on one of the bodies. Israeli officials said the bomb contained nine to 17 pounds of explosives, generating a blast that sent a shower of glass and bread trays into the streets.

"It was very, very hot and he had a coat on," a witness named Benny Mazgini, 45, told Israel Radio. "It didn't look right to me. I thought to myself, 'What's that idiot dressed like that for?' A couple of seconds later I heard a massive explosion."

Olmert said he is weighing Israel's response and vowed to "continue in our ongoing and unending struggle against terrorists and those who send them."

At a news conference in Gaza City, a masked gunman from Islamic Jihad's military wing identified the bomber as Mohammed Siksik, a member of the group from the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.

Siksik left home three days ago, according to family members interviewed by the Palestinian Ramattan news service, after rival Hamas and Fatah militias began their latest round of factional fighting. Islamic Jihad officials said he entered Israel through Jordan, a contention the Jordanian government denied.

Mickey Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said Siksik likely slipped across the Gaza border and into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Israel has complained frequently about Palestinian arms smuggling along the frontier since its soldiers left the border area in November 2005.

Rosenfeld said Siksik then likely entered Israel from the Sinai, a vast, lightly populated desert along Israel's southern border. Israeli government officials said investigators were still gathering evidence of his movements.

Witness accounts in the Israeli media said Siksik may have received a ride into Eilat from a resident, who grew suspicious and called the police after dropping him off. Siksik may have triggered the bomb before he had originally planned after hearing police cars approach the bakery, witnesses said.

The victims were identified as Emil Almaliakh, 23; Michael Ben Saadon, 27; and Israel Samolia, 26. Almaliakh and Ben Saadon opened the bakery eight months ago, according to Israeli media reports, and Samolia worked there.

The Islamic Jihad official in Gaza said a group called the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades-Army of the Believers, which he characterized as an offshoot of Fatah's armed wing, also participated in the attack. He called on all Palestinian armed groups to stop their internal fighting and "point their arms, all their arms, at the Zionist enemy."

Fatah officials condemned the bombing, saying it undermined the party's goal of reviving peace negotiations with Israel. But Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, which won parliamentary elections a year ago and controls the Palestinian ministries, said that "all the Palestinian people and factions support this martyr operation."

"This type of operation is a normal response to the occupation and the violation of our rights as a Palestinian people," said Barhoum, who also cited the international aid boycott against the Palestinian government imposed after Hamas's election as justification for the attack.

In a statement, the White House said: "The burden of responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks rests with the Palestinian Authority government. Failure to act against terror will inevitably affect relations between that government and the international community and undermine the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own."

The Islamic Jihad official said the bombing was retaliation for Israeli military operations in Gaza, many of which have swept through Beit Lahiya over the past six months, and assassinations of the group's members.

Islamic Jihad has not agreed to any cease-fire agreements with Israel, and frequently fires rockets at Israeli towns along the Gaza border. Israeli military airstrikes have killed many Islamic Jihad gunmen on their way to fire rockets.