Hamas claims Tel Aviv attack as Blinken promotes cease-fire in Israel

TEL AVIV – Hamas claimed responsibility for a bombing that shook Tel Aviv on Sunday night as Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived to promote a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal in Gaza, which he described as potentially a last-ditch chance to restore calm to the Middle East.

“This is a decisive moment – probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire, and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” Blinken said Monday, alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Later, after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken told reporters that “Israel accepts the bridging proposal,” an effort by mediators in Doha last week to close the remaining gaps between the two sides. “It’s now incumbent upon Hamas to do the same,” he said.

While the Biden administration has said that a deal could be concluded as early as this week, the explosion in Tel Aviv on Sunday night – about an hour after Blinken touched down in the city – underscored the peril of the moment and the risk of escalation. Israelis feared the attack presaged a dark shift in the conflict, sparking memories of the second intifada, the armed Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation between 2000 and 2005 that was marked with bombings in malls, on buses and outside nightclubs

Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement that it worked with Palestinian Islamic Jihad to execute the “martyrdom operation” – a term the militant groups use to refer to suicide bombings. It was not immediately clear, however, whether the attacker planned to kill himself, or was intending to plant the bomb before it exploded.

Israeli police and Shin Bet, the country’s internal security service, said in a joint statement that a “powerful explosive device” detonated in a “terrorist attack” and injured one person, adding that they are still investigating. The explosion occurred near the Shimon Bar Yochai synagogue, as more than 100 people were praying, according to Rabbi Avraham Meshulam.

“It shook the synagogue,” Meshulam, 73, told the Washington Post. “The windows shattered, people screamed and there was chaos. People thought it was a missile from Iran. In the end, it turned out to be a terrorist.”

Israeli police spokesman Eli Levy told Israeli military radio that if the explosion had occurred a few meters closer to the worshipers, “we would have woken up to a huge disaster.” Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said the attacker was Palestinian and that an explosive device in his backpack “exploded before he managed to reach a more heavily populated area.”

Hamas warned that such operations “will resume prominently” as long as the war in Gaza continues. The last suicide attack inside Israel took place in 2016, when an attacker detonated a bomb on a Jerusalem bus, injuring 21 people; while Hamas later identified the 19-year-old Palestinian assailant, it stopped short of claiming responsibility.

Hamas has largely avoided suicide attacks in recent years as it sought more international acceptance, said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow in international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London.

The attack in Tel Aviv “represents clear desperation,” he said “They want to try and give the Israelis a bloody nose at home in the same way they are getting all this pain.”

The level of bloodshed in Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in Israel’s war against Hamas, and in the occupied West Bank, where nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed since October in Israeli military raids and attacks by radical settlers, has drawn a large recruitment pool for militants, Hellyer said. In such an environment, he added, Palestinian opposition to such operations, which are “seen as hard to justify religiously,” will probably “be more muted.”

Israel’s security agencies say they have thwarted several plots to carry out suicide bombings in Israel in recent months. Around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants overran southern Israel.

Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli military intelligence, pointed to a “dramatic escalation in the rate of terror in the West Bank” in the months since, which he said has been overshadowed by the war in Gaza and rising tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border.

“It seems that maybe another front is being opened,” he said. “These are going to be very bad years for Israel.”

At the scene of the bombing Sunday night, shrapnel marks pitted the road where a black plastic body bag lay behind red and white police cordons. Police held back onlookers as first responders searched the area with flashlights. Nearby, a white Nissan truck with a smashed windshield was parked.

The United States, hoping to stem the spiraling violence, is pushing for a deal supported by mediating partners Qatar and Egypt that calls for a six-week cease-fire in Gaza, the release of scores of Israeli hostages captured on Oct. 7 in exchange for Palestinian detainees and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from major population centers in Gaza.

But leaders of Hamas and Israel cast doubt on the prospect of a diplomatic breakthrough almost as soon as Blinken arrived in Israel – his ninth trip to the Middle East since October.

Hamas accused the United States of adopting all of Israel’s demands in its proposal, and none from Hamas’s side. “What happened in the last meeting is that the U.S. administration presented a proposal that includes everything Netanyahu wants,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the Post.

Netanyahu ruled out an Israeli withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, a key Hamas demand, telling his cabinet Sunday that he is conducting “give-and-take” negotiations “not give-and-give.”

After meeting with Blinken on Monday, Netanyahu struck a more positive tone, saying he greatly appreciated “the understanding that the United States has shown to our vital security interests while in our joint efforts to bring about the release of our hostages.”

Blinken declined to go into specifics about the removal or reduction of Israeli forces along the Philadelphi Corridor, acknowledging “there are questions of implementation” that need to be addressed so Israel and Hamas understand “what each side will do to carry out commitments.”

“That’s the next step, assuming Hamas agrees to the bridging proposal,” Blinken said.

Blinken, who also met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, said it was a “fraught moment” for Israel, which has been bracing for potential attacks by Iran and its proxies in retaliation for the assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr.

Mencer, the Israeli government spokesman, accused Hamas of coordinating the attack to disrupt cease-fire negotiations. “This is often the way with Hamas on the eve of potential deals to create peace in this region. They always try and have these terrorist outrages in order to inflame the region,” he said.

Blinken emphasized that it was important that “no one take any steps that could derail this process” through “provocations.”

The Biden administration expects cease-fire and hostage release negotiations to resume in Cairo later this week, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks.

“The single quickest, best, most effective way to relieve the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people … is to complete this agreement,” Blinken said before departing for Egypt.