Mona Ziade
Daily Star staff

The Middle East plunged deeper into turmoil Tuesday, with Palestinians mounting a new suicide bombing near Tel Aviv and Israeli forces, buoyed by US support, keeping Yasser Arafat under a tight siege at his headquarters in Ramallah for a second straight day.
As the violence raged, Saudi Arabia’s veteran foreign minister rushed unexpectedly to Washington, apparently seeking to decipher signs of waning enthusiasm for a peace conference this summer and growing sympathy for Ariel Sharon’s desire to politically write off his nemesis, Yasser Arafat.
Prince Saud al-Faisal’s previously unannounced trip came as the Israeli prime minister was wrapping up his own talks in the United States, proclaiming a diplomatic victory on his sixth trip to Washington under the Bush administration, compared to none by the Palestinian president.
The evaluation of Sharon’s trip ­  “we got what we wanted,” as one of his aides put it ­ contrasted sharply with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s failed attempt to persuade Bush to endorse a timetable for the creation of a Palestinian state.
At least nine Israelis were wounded Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a restaurant in Herzliya, capping off a violent day which left four Palestinians dead and four Israelis wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and the Palestinian Authority quickly condemned the act.
Earlier, a leader of Hamas suggested that the tacit US green light to Israel to maintain the military pressure on the Palestinians would backfire.
“Sharon’s visit and meeting with Bush resulted in unlimited support, as (Bush) mentioned that it is Israel’s right to continue military operations,” Mousa Abu Marzouk told Reuters in an interview in Damascus. “(Washington) is not an honest broker or a neutral intermediary; it stands completely behind Israel,” he added, arguing that the Palestinians’ best hope was to continue suicide attacks.
Earlier, in the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinians killed two compatriots suspected of collaborating with Israel.
The body of one was dragged to the place where Marwan Zalloum, local leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike on his car on April 22. The burned-out hulk of the car still lay at the spot of the attack, a grisly memorial to the militia leader, accused by Israel of directing and carrying out many attacks.
Israeli forces briefly entered the West Bank towns of Tulkarem and Bethlehem on Tuesday, looking for suspects.
Near Hebron, three Israeli teenagers were wounded, one seriously, when a bomb exploded in a field.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli policeman. Police said the assailant escaped.
Also, two Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip ­ one was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he opened fire on a civilian vehicle, the military said.
The Israeli military said soldiers arrested 30 Palestinians in Tuesday’s sweeps in Ramallah, where Arafat remained holed up behind earthen barricades set by the Israelis to seal off his complex.  Among those arrested was lawyer Youssef Tarifi, son of Palestinian Cabinet Minister Jamal Tarifi. They army would not say why he was detained.
The Israeli Army declared Ramallah under curfew and off-limits to reporters.
Significantly absent from Bush’s remarks after he saw Sharon was a reference to the Palestinian homeland he had been promoting in his so-called “two-state” vision. This was one of the signs of the changing of tide that apparently sent Prince Saud scurrying to Washington. The Saudi minister visited Cairo earlier, and officials said he planned to meet in the United States with Bush and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who reportedly has been at odds with the White House over the peace process and Arafat’s future.
Powell said Tuesday that Bush “in the very near future ... will make clear his views on how to move forward.”
A Saudi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in Cairo that Saud’s mission aimed to counter Sharon’s trip and remind Bush of his earlier pledge to Crown Prince Abdullah to help set up a Palestinian state.
Saud told reporters in Cairo that Mubarak had conveyed “the Arab stance” in his weekend talks with Bush at Camp David. Mubarak urged Bush to set a schedule for ending Israel’s hold on the West Bank and Gaza and for Palestinian statehood, saying that would help decrease violence by giving Palestinians hope in the peace process.
But Sharon, who met Bush Monday, was assured that America would not set a schedule for ending Israeli incursions into the West Bank and Gaza and for establishing a Palestinian state.
Bush also said that dramatic change within the Palestinian Authority was needed to allow  progress toward peace.
“The conditions (for a regional peace conference) aren’t even there yet. That’s because no one has confidence in the emerging Palestinian government,” Bush said.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher briefed his Saudi counterpart on Mubarak’s talks in the United States. Maher said later that the American side knows that “the method put forth by Mubarak is the only method which could achieve peace and stability.”
Maher said he told Prince Saud that “we found a reasonable response from the United States, and we expect, despite … Sharon’s attempts to propagate wrong concepts and failed policies that have not achieved any result, the understanding we found to be reflected in the declaration the US is planning soon to define its position” on peace.
Maher said the Saudis and Egyptians were “moving toward the same goal,” enforcing the Arab Peace Initiative, which was authored by the kingdom and endorsed at the Arab summit in Beirut in March.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill,  Sharon thanked members of the House and Senate for their support. He had coffee with Senate leaders, conferred with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and met with members of the House.
“There is no disagreement in this country on support for Israel,” said Senator Joseph Biden, the committee chairman.
Many of those trying to decipher US policy were having trouble reconciling Bush’s “vision” of a Palestinian state with his support for Israeli actions that Sharon presents as part of the “war on terror.”
And a new development in America’s own war on terror appeared set to sidetrack the Bush administration’s attention. The Federal Bureau of Investigations says it has foiled a plot to attack the United States with radioactive material allegedly hatched by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terror network. Abdullah al-Muhajir, an American of Puerto Rican descent born Jose Padilla in New York, was detained by the FBI in Chicago on May 8, when he arrived from Pakistan.
The FBI said the idea of exploding a “dirty bomb” in the United States had not got past the planning stages.

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