Started,The Third Intafada Has? Today's Jerusalem Bombing Part of Palestinian Terror Escalation

TV footage showed a number of injured people being carried away from the scene on stretchers.  Meir Hagid, the driver of one of the damaged buses, said he heard a loud explosion as he drove by the site, near the main entrance to Jerusalem and its central bus station. "I heard the explosion in the bus stop," he said. Nobody in his bus was hurt.  Earlier reports suggested that at least two people had been killed in the bus bombing in Jerusalem today, but follow-up from Israel reports that one person has died and up to 35 have been wounded. 

It was not a homicide bombing, this was a bomb left in a phone booth set to go off at the "right time."



Today's bombing is part of a ramp-up in terrorism seen in Israel over the past few weeks.

• March 6: A sanitation worker from the Jerusalem Municipality lost his hand on Sunday when a garbage bag he was lifting exploded, in what police believe was the first terrorist attack in the capital in more than a year. The garbage bag was on a traffic island in the middle of Derech Hebron, next to the Mar Elias Monastery, in south Jerusalem, almost in the Gilo neighborhood. Another sanitation workerI who was working alongside the first victim was lightly injured by the explosion. Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated both men to Hadassah University Medical Center in Ein Kerem.

• March 11: Terrorists Sneak into Jewish Town of Itamar, killing 5 members of the Fogel Family three of which were young children, all of which were brutally massacred. 

• March 18-March 23: During the past six days there have been 77 "projectiles" have been fired into Israel from Gaza--67 Mortars, 3 Grad Missiles, 7 Qassams 

• 3/18 10 Mortars 
• 3/19 50 Mortars
•  3/20 2 Qassam Missiles, 1 Grad Missile, 1 Mortar
• 3/21 1 Qassam Missile
• 3/22 4 Qassam Missiles, 4 Mortars 
• 3/23 2 Grad Missiles, 2 Mortars

 All of this has happened since Libyan strongman Quadaffi has come under attack from his people. The ramp up in mortar attacks and today's bombing have happened since the no-fly zone has been enforced by the western powers.  Is this a coincidence? I doubt it. This is a deliberate attempt to provoke Israel into defending herself to the scale of Operation Cast Lead in late 2008.

A possible explanation of the uptick in Palestinian terror is to help Quadaffi. A major Israeli defensive operation in Gaza would certainly ease the pressure on the Libyan despot, after all the Libyan "no fly zone" is a UN operation, and there is nothing the UN enjoys more is finding an opportunity to condemn Israel.

What ever the reason, today's bombing in Jerusalem is not a single incident, it is part of the opening round of something much bigger.