Tehilah Cohen is an 8 1/2 year-old girl, who like millions of children her age boards the school bus every morning. Monday was like any other day: Tehilah, her sister Orit, 12, and her brother Yisrael, 7, were on time, except that her other brother, Avraham, 10 was late. The bus driver wouldn't wait for Avraham, so he missed the bus.

And how lucky he was.

At around 7:30 a.m., a lethal, remote-controlled roadside bomb exploded next to the bus as it went along its usual route. The bomb had been prepared and placed by Palestinians, who were waiting specifically for the school-bus, as the bomb was not set off when the army patrol checking the road passed by. Pieces of metal, carefully added to the bomb so to cause maximum damage to human beings, penetrated the armored sides of the bus, tearing into the bodies of the passengers. Two adults were killed on the spot, and nine people, including the three children of the Cohen family and two more children, were wounded.

For eighteen hours, a team of doctors fought to save the legs of Tehilah Cohen..In the adjacent operating rooms, her brother and sister were undergoing their own surgeries. Yisrael's leg was amputated below the knee, and Orit lost her foot. Israelis watching coverage of the event on their TV screens prayed along with the devastated parents as they waited outside the trauma ward for word of their children's condition.

The Cohen family lives in Kfar Darom, a small Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip. The Cohens, who are religiously observant Jews, believe that Jews can, and should, live anywhere in Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, because it had been given to the People of Israel by God. They are willing to make great personal sacrifices for their belief: Two years ago, a suicide bomber approached their children's school-bus (this time, with Avraham inside), and detonated himself. They were lucky that time - their mother Nogah says it was a miracle - but the blast killed an Israeli soldier who was escorting the bus in his jeep. This time, the miracles ended for the Cohen family.

There are some Israelis who firmly share the views of the Cohens and are not ready for any compromise on the issue of settlement. There are other Israelis who believe that settling in places like Kfar Darom was wrong in the first place, because settlements in the mainly Arab areas captured in 1967 only create a hindrance to peace. The majority of Israelis, however, while believing that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews, have consistently shown their readiness to compromise with the Palestinians, if that would achieve a comprehensive, long--lasting peace.

This is exactly what was put on the table at Camp David last summer -- a far-reaching compromise. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was leaning over backwards to accommodate Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat. True, there were still wide gaps concerning Jerusalem and the refugee problem. But when it came to the other sore issue, settlements, Barak was offering Arafat almost 95 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. Who knows, had Arafat said yes to that unprecedented, generous offer, Kfar Darom would have had to go. But Arafat couldn't resist the temptation. Knowing that signing the deal would have forced him to exchange his uniform for a business suit and change his image from that of a revolutionary, freedom fighter into the less glamorous figure of nation-builder, he said no and resorted to violence. Israeli intelligence now links him to the attack that devastated the Cohen family, and because of his reckless conduct, his own people are now suffering even more.

The Palestinians must now take stock and decide whether by opting again for violence instead of negotiation, Arafat has brought them any good. He did manage to accomplish something for the normally fractious Israeli society: he united all Israelis behind the Cohen family. When someone attacks our children so brutally, we put aside our political differences and defend ourselves the best we can.

When common sense prevails at last, and the Palestinians stop the violence and resume the negotiations with Israel, they will find us, as ever, ready to talk. I'm not sure, though, that as many Israelis will be inclined to compromise as before. The sight of the Cohen children in the emergency room will not be forgotten so quickly. The Palestinians then will have only Yasser Arafat to blame.

Uri Dromi is the publications director at the Israel democracy Institute in Jerusalem.

Back to the Culture page