CNN - Tel Aviv bombing triggers strong feelings

Tel Aviv bombing triggers strong feelings

March 4, 1996
Web posted at: 11:40 p.m. EST (0440 GMT)

The suicide bombing in Tel Aviv Monday in which 14 people were killed, drew sharp reactions within Israel and around the world.

Here is a sampling of what world leaders and people close to the tragedy said about the incident.

"Even this time, with all the pain in my heart, we will come out of this stronger."

-- Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres

"Security is collapsing, and there can be no peace unless we bring back security for the people, because what value does peace have if we are all blown up in the streets?"

-- Benjamin Netanyahu, leader, Likud Party

"Today's crime strengthens our determination to pursue our policy of fighting terrorism here and abroad ... We have to work with the Israelis to destroy their (the terrorists') infrastructure and to uproot terrorism."

-- Palestinian Authority President
  Yasser Arafat

"This is war. We must deal directly with the Hamas terror machine. This is a new type of terror. The most terrible thing is that they attacked on Purim when all the children are out in the heart of Tel Aviv."

-- Israeli Health Minister Ephraim Sneh

"The Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement demands that the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades and the students of the martyr Yahya Ayyash everywhere halt military attacks."

-- Hamas member Mohammed Shamaa

Around the world

"The civilized world will not, must not, tolerate these acts of terrorism, which have no goal except the undermining of the Middle East process."

-- U.N. Secretary-General
  Boutros Boutros-Ghali

"These vile acts have the clear purpose of trying to undermine Middle East peace efforts through such terror,"

-- United Nations Security Council

"Once again the enemies of peace have murdered completely innocent Israeli citizens, including children, in their hysterical, determined, fanatic attempt to kill all hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and others in the Middle East."

--U.S. President Bill Clinton

"I am confident that your country, while mobilizing its forces against terrorism and those who fuel it, will choose to pursue the peace process."

-- President Jacques Chirac, in open letter to Peres

"I condemn this sick act of violence and those who planned and executed it."

-- British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind

"Italy, speaking also in the name of the European Union, sends its heartfelt thoughts to the victims of this atrocity and expresses its most sincere condolences to the government and people of Israel."

-- Italian Foreign Ministry

"We, in Moscow, hope that the pain and emotions borne by another terrorist attack will not shatter the commitment of participants in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process ... to continue a constructive dialogue and the search for mutually acceptable agreements."

-- Russian Foreign Ministry

"Israel ... is now tasting its own medicine. The divine retribution on those who spread corruption and injustice on the Earth will be severe."

-- Islamic Republic News Agency, official news agency of Iran

Other Voices:

"We are going to win this struggle for peace, no matter how many attempts there will be on our lives, on our innocent citizens," she said. "We are horrified. We are terrified. We hate it...yet we have to be strong. We have to be determined. We have to continue and we shall win."

-- Leah Rabin, widow of slain Israeli Prime
   Minister Yitzhak Rabin

"The Palestinians have failed. Not only because a few fanatics make bombs but because the Palestinians applaud it. What kind of people send their children to die?" "The peace process is dying."

-- Ephraim Kishon, author

"When you see a (child's) costume lying on the street, strewn with blood, what else is there to say?"

-- Tel Aviv Mayor Ronnie Milo

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AP and Reuters contributed to this report