TEL AVIV, Israel — A Palestinian suicide bomber carried out the deadliest attack on Israel in almost two years on Monday when he detonated his bag of explosives at a falafel restaurant in Tel Aviv — an act that Hamas, which leads the new Palestinian government, called legitimate.
Nine people were killed and dozens wounded in the blast, in the same small restaurant that was hit by a suicide bomber just three months ago, on Jan. 19. In that attack, 20 Israelis were injured, but only the bomber was killed.
Though Monday's bombing was carried out by Islamic Jihad, a radical faction that is not part of the government, spokesmen for Hamas and the Palestinian Interior Ministry said it was a legitimate response to what they called Israeli aggression. Islamic Jihad released a video in which the bomber, Sami Hammad, 21, of the West Bank town of Jenin, said the act was dedicated to the thousands of Palestinians jailed by Israel. "There will be more such operations," he said.
Even so, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the attack, reflecting a split in the Palestinian leadership.
The explosion ripped through the restaurant just hours before Israel's new Parliament was sworn into office, and Israel said it held the Hamas-led government ultimately responsible. "They are responsible because their leaders are encouraging these attacks," said Gideon Meir, a senior official at Israel's Foreign Ministry.
The White House issued a statement reiterating that the United States "will have no contact" with a "Palestinian government that encourages or tolerates terrorism against innocent men, women and children."
Israel did not say how it would respond. But around midnight on Monday, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a metal workshop in Gaza City, causing damage but no injuries. The military said the shop was used to manufacture rockets that are fired at Israel.
"We had hoped to celebrate the Israeli democracy today in a different atmosphere, and now we are again forced to cope with murderous terror," Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister-designate, told Parliament in Jerusalem. "The government of Israel will do what must be done in order to deal with the terrorists and those who dispatch them."
At the restaurant, The Mayor's Falafel, tiles and wires dangled from the ceiling. The street was covered with shards of glass. Blood was pooled on the sidewalk and speckled on the sides of parked cars.