Tel Aviv bombing dismays papers

Monday's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv dominates the Israeli, Palestinian and Middle Eastern press.

Israeli papers lament the failure to stop bombings inside the country, and one says that the bombing may only hasten the demise of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian commentators fear possible reprisal attacks, while other Middle Eastern dailies point the finger back at Israel for its "systematic terrorism" against the Palestinian people.

Zeev Schiff in Israel's Haaretz

Recent declarations about Israel's victory over terror now sound like a bad joke. Israel continues to fail in deterring those who transport the bombers into Israel... The fight against terror has to be conducted more forcefully, with more being done to complete the separation fence, which is taking a strangely long time.

Yaakov Katz in Israel's Jerusalem Post

Despite some recent success in curbing terror, Monday's attack proves what defence officials have been saying all along during the current West Bank campaign: despite a daily IDF [Israeli army] presence, there is no way to hermetically seal the [Palestinian] territories.

Alex Fishman in Israel's Yediot Aharonot

Yesterday's terrorist attack in Tel Aviv is another stage in the process of our being sucked back into the territories and into the vacuum and the black hole created since Hamas came to power. And we are being sucked into this chaos with our eyes open.

Ben Kaspit in Maariv

For the first time since Oslo 13 years ago a government that does not condemn terrorism is sitting in Ramallah. On the contrary, its leaders see terrorism as a legitimate resistance tool.

Prof. Shaul Mashal in Yediot Aharonot

Following the establishment of a new government headed by Hamas, a terrorist attack of this kind threatens to shorten the fuse of its life even before it jumps into the cold water.

Hasan al-Batal in Palestinian Al-Ayyam

Yesterday's operation in southern Tel Aviv was light- to-middleweight on the scale of suicide attacks as far as the number of casualties goes. However, it will have heavyweight political consequences. After an interval that Israel attributes to 'security measures and the efficacy of the separation wall', and after the unilateral truce that some factions have been observing, this operation could be a return to tit-for-tat attacks and the end of restraint.

Palestinian Al-Quds

The blast yesterday in Tel Aviv and the Israeli deaths and injuries that resulted from it are a similar kind of violence to the Israeli forces' attacks on Palestinians that don't differentiate between militants and the civilian population. The violence must be stopped by both sides of the conflict, and this stop must be bilateral and simultaneous.

Jordan's Al-Dustur

We have never allowed ourselves to justify any operation that targets civilians, any civilians. But every time Palestinians or Israelis face mass murder as a result of systematic Israeli terrorism, and Palestinians react with anger, despair and humiliation, we hold the Israeli leadership responsible, because it insists on occupying the Palestinian people's lands and on attacking them every day, killing their children, bringing resident's houses down on their heads, destroying trees and fields right in front of the eyes of the miserable farmers, closing crossings, destroying the economy and killing the hopes of the Palestinians, big or small.

Salman Talal in Lebanon's Al-Safir

Who has the right to blame this youth from Jenin, whose parents named him Sami Salim Hamad? The Israeli occupation gave him no rights except the right of martyrdom. It took away all his human rights, even those that allow a decent life in the 21st century!

Iranian Arabic paper Al-Vefagh

The news of the martyrdom attack in Tel Aviv had not even spread before the statements of condemnation started to flow from the US, France, Russia, Britain and other Western countries, describing the attack, as usual, as cowardly and those who did it as terrorists. Some Arab and Islamic media reported these same positions, without mentioning the reasons behind this event and the daily aggression that the Zionists are committing against innocent women and children in Palestine.

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