Pattern of Terrorism Must Be Stopped

Along with yesterday's double-bombing attack in Israel will come condemnations and reaffirmation that the peace process must continue. However, along with this necessary and important reaction, we must stop a moment and think about what has been happening. Have we really become so habituated to this pattern of terrible and outraging acts that have already claimed the lives of so many that it has become just that, a pattern?

Let us review the pattern: a bomb explodes on a civilian bus, leaving dozens of people wounded and killed. The Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority condemn the act. The occupied territories are then sealed off while the country recovers and the victims are mourned.

Yassir Arafat then arrests and imprisons a number of suspects belonging to Hamas. Shimon Peres announces that peace negotiations will continue. For the week immediately after the attack, some Israelis feel uncomfortable riding the buses in Israel; people feel unsafe in their own country.

Yesterday's bombing was reportedly in retaliation for the murder of Ayyash, "the Engineer," that occurred in early January; it was also supposedly in commemoration of the second-year anniversary of the Baruch Goldstein massacre in Hebron. But is this what awaits Israel--annual bombings in commemoration of events such as the Goldstein massacre (which was so widely deplored among the Israeli people and government) or the murder of Ayyash?

Such a pattern cannot be tolerated in any vision of a future Middle East. Provisions against terrorist attacks must be made, simply because it has come to the point of occurring too often and claiming too many lives.

Arafat must control Hamas and other fundamentalist groups responsible for terror; Peres must be more stern and severe with the issue of terrorist attacks. Politicians must deal with such events differently: not for the span of a few weeks when they occur, but on a more rigorous and continual basis. These bombings have turned into a sick pattern of events--the pattern must be broken. --Yuval Segal '97   --Dalia Trachtenberg '96   Co-chairs,   Harvard Students for Israel