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JERUSALEM (CNN) — A suicide bomber killed seven people and wounded 30 others on a bus in northern Israel on Wednesday morning, a police spokesman said.
Israel Defense Forces said four of those killed were soldiers. The bomber also died in the blast.
Despite the bombing, a joint security meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials was still on for Wednesday, according to a Ministry of Defense spokesman.
The attack happened on the bus as it traveled along a highway from Tel Aviv to Nazareth near the Israeli-Arab town of Um el-Fahm. The explosion mangled the center of the bus, blowing a hole through the roof and knocking out all its windows. Most of the injured were Israeli Arabs, according to the police spokesman.
“He got inside and as I passed the second stop light … there was a blast,” the bus driver said. “When I looked in the mirror, I saw everything smashed, everything wrecked and flames started to come from one of the seats.”
Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack in calls to several news organizations, saying the bomber was a 24-year-old Islamic activist from a village near the West Bank city of Jenin. Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a militant group dedicated to the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel.
An Israeli government spokesman said the attack proves that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has not issued orders on all Palestinians to stop terror attacks.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack, and in a dispatch carried by the Palestinian news agency WAFA, Palestinian leaders appealed to their people not to carry out attacks inside Israel.
”The Palestinian leadership’s efforts are concentrated right now on ending the Israeli aggression and lifting the siege and putting an end to the collective punishment,” said the dispatch. “This requires from all not to do any military operations against civilians inside Israel, specially operations like this one in Um el-Fahm which the Palestinian leadership have condemned and rejected.
”Such operations may delay the implementation of the cease-fire and the implementation of Tenet and Mitchell’s plans.”
On Tuesday, both sides were saying they are committed to the peace process as the United States continued to try to bring them back to the negotiating table.
Palestinian Cabinet members met lateTuesday and issued a statement that said they are committed to a “peace option as a mechanism to solving the Palestinian-Israeli problem” and a “detailed implementation of the Mitchell report and the Tenet plan.”
CNN has learned a potential meeting between U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Arafat — a meeting that hinges on progress in the peace process — would be held in Egypt and could happen just before or just after next week’s Arab League summit in Beirut.
Cheney said Tuesday he would return to the region within days to meet with Arafat if the Palestinians began implementing the Tenet proposal, which calls for negotiating a cease-fire and urges both sides to reaffirm commitments to the Mitchell report.
The Mitchell report calls for a resumption of security cooperation, a halt to the construction of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories, a denunciation of terrorism and resumption of peace talks. (The Mitchell report)
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he is prepared to let Arafat travel to the Arab League summit in Beirut if Arafat implements the Tenet plan — a formal cease-fire, as proposed by CIA Director George Tenet. (The Tenet plan)
In a series of high-stakes negotiations in recent days, the prospect of a meeting between Cheney and Arafat was put on the table by U.S. officials but was done after consultations with Sharon and in a direct meeting between U.S. Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni and Arafat.
Arafat promised to quickly implement the Tenet plan, increasing security cooperation with Israel, and eventually bringing about a truce between the Israelis and Palestinians.
At one point, the Palestinians wanted any Cheney-Arafat meeting to be held in Ramallah in the West Bank. However, U.S. officials decided it would be inappropriate, not only for security reasons, but because they believed any meeting should be held on neutral ground so as not to embarrass Sharon.
U.S. officials said Egypt was chosen because it is a neutral site and because it has hosted Mideast summit talks in the past. It would also be a reward for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has inserted himself into the peace process in recent weeks in an attempt to end the violence.
No date has been set for a meeting, but the vice president is prepared to leave Washington early next week if it comes before the Arab summit.
The meeting will hang on Zinni’s assessment of whether Arafat has kept his promise to implement a truce agreement and implement other security cooperation details included in the Tenet plan.
In other developments Wednesday, there was an explosion at an Israeli military post on the Egyptian-Israeli border near Rafah in southern Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF said there were no injuries.
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