Sharon orders an 'intense response' to bus bombing

Atrocity shatters any remaining hope of Labour leader persuading voters to give peace one more chance

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, ordered the army to carry out a "wide and extensive operation" in response to the suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem yesterday morning that killed 11 commuters and schoolchildren.

Mr Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, predicted a "long and intensified campaign" in the Bethlehem area, where the 23-year-old Hamas bomber had come from. He told The Independent: "The leaders of Hamas will be hard pressed to find a safe place to hide or a safe place to sleep in."

Mr Gissin stressed that Israel would not be provoked into the kind of massive retaliation that would jeopardise President George Bush's campaign against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. "The only thing that guides Mr Sharon is how to bring down the level of terrorism," he said.

The bombing, the first in Jerusalem in three months, came barely 36 hours after the opposition Labour party chose the dovish former general Amram Mitzna as its standard-bearer for the 28 January general election. Welcoming Mr Mitzna's victory in Tuesday's primary, the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, took care to say that he was not interfering in Israel's internal politics. Hamas, it seems, had no such scruples. Yesterday's atrocity strikes a devastating blow to Mr Mitzna's chances of persuading an already sceptical public to give peace one more chance.

Labour has been there before. After Yitzhak Rabin's assassination by a Jewish extremist in November 1995, his successor, Shimon Peres, looked likely to win the general elections. But a season of Hamas bombings in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the southern port city of Ashkelon in early 1996 tilted the balance to the right-wing Likud party's Binyamin Netanyahu.

Support for Mr Peres, the Nobel peace prize-winning architect of the 1993 Oslo accords, swung from 59 per cent immediately after he took over as acting prime minister to a tiny margin for Mr Netanyahu by polling day at the end of May. Mr Peres had no doubt that Hamas had brought the right back to power.

Hamas's bellicose statements after yesterday's bombing, its repudiation of any ceasefire and its pledge to "make life hell" for Israelis, suggest that it knew what it was doing. A perpetuation of Mr Sharon's mailed-fist policies and boycott of Mr Arafat is exactly what Hamas needs to fuel its campaign against Israel.

Mr Mitzna cannot change his platform – an immediate resumption of negotiations with Mr Arafat, evacuation of the Gaza Strip, a readiness for substantial West Bank withdrawals – even if he wanted to. He would lose all credibility if he changed tack now.

Hanoch Smith, a veteran pollster, summed it up: "Mitzna didn't have too wonderful a chance even without the bombing. I don't think one bombing changes anything, but if there's a whole series during the election campaign, it's going to be even harder. Sharon's in a win-win situation. If the bombings stop, he can say 'we tamed them'. If they go on, he can say 'we're hitting the terrorists'."