Chris Burns: Road map in jeopardy
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CNN's Chris Burns
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Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar survives an Israeli airstrike on his home in Gaza City.
CNN's Matthew Chance reports Israel is saying it will not buckle under terror attacks.
Security and rescue workers attend blast victims outside a Jerusalem cafe.
CNN's Jerrold Kessel reports on the suicide bombing outside Tel Aviv.
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SPECIAL REPORT
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GAZA CITY (CNN) -- A day after Islamic militant group Hamas carried out two suicide bombings that killed 15 Israelis, the Israeli air force Wednesday struck the home of a senior leader of Hamas.
Hamas said the attacks were retaliation for what it called Israeli crimes against Palestinians. CNN correspondent Chris Burns spoke Wednesday from Gaza City with CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien.
BURNS: It's hard to see U.S. President Bush's road map [for Mideast peace] for all the smoke around here. Yet another Israeli air strike here, striking at a political figure of Hamas, that was very significant because Israel had only begun doing that in the last couple weeks.
[Hamas leader] Mahmoud Zahar has been moderately wounded -- although one of his sons and bodyguard were killed. His wife and daughter are in intensive care, in critical condition, among 20 people who have been injured. This comes on the heels of a twin suicide bombing inside Israel that killed 15 people.
This step-up of violence in the last two and a half weeks has taken its political toll on the Palestinian side where Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian [Authority] prime minister, threw up his hands and gave up and passed it on to the next person, [Ahmed Qorei, also called Abu Ala], who is asking for the same thing that Mahmoud Abbas was asking for. That's cooperation, not only from the Palestinian side and [Palestinian Authority President] Yasser Arafat to pull together security forces and take on the militants -- but on the Israeli side, for some confidence-building measures: lifting more closures, freeing more Palestinian prisoners and also pulling up some of those settlement outposts.
This is what is facing the Palestinian government, and at the same time this crisis is putting the road map for peace in jeopardy.
O'BRIEN: In recent days, we have heard Israel talking about the possibility of expelling Yasser Arafat. Have you heard that -- ...and how likely do you think that could be?
BURNS: There have been a lot of calls within the last few days, going up as far up as the Israeli foreign minister who is saying it is inevitable that Yasser Arafat be expelled.
However, the Israeli government has yet to take a firm policy stand on that. This latest violence could perhaps push them over the edge. The U.S. government has repeatedly said it objects to that sort of policy and many analysts say it would only empower Arafat -- by sending him abroad he could go and campaign for his cause.
That is very much being debated now. However, there could be increasing calls for that. The Israelis are also threatening a full-scale invasion of 2,000 to 3,000 troops inside Gaza to go after Hamas militants.
This increasing violence does seem to be putting pressure on the Israeli government to take even further action, once again further pushing the road map for peace [a U.S.-backed, step-by-step process to lead to peace and an independent Palestine by 2005] to the background.
