Four days after the Beit Lid bombing, Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shkaki spoke with Time correspondent Lara Marlowe in Damascus, giving a chilling picture of how he says the attack was planned. Though he disclaimed direct responsibility, he was obviously pleased, grinning and laughing throughout the interview. Born in the Gaza Strip, Shkaki, 44, joined the Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative Islamist group, while studying medicine in Egypt in the '70s. He returned to the Gaza Strip in 1981 and founded Islamic Jihad. Shkaki's movement set itself apart from other groups with similar names by staging suicide attacks in Israel and the occupied territories. Deported in 1988, he has been directing the organization from a refugee camp in Damascus since 1989.
TIME: How do you plan a bombing of this kind? How was the target chosen? SHKAKI: It was planned very well. The two mujahedin [the Gaza men who carried the bombs] knew each other very well. Before the attack happened, they went to the scene of the operation and studied it carefully. At the appointed time, they went from Gaza to Tel Aviv, and from Tel Aviv to the military bus station, which was well protected. Beside the military station there was a small coffee shop where soldiers go. The two men coordinated between them: the first was to enter the shop and blow himself up, while the second was to stay outside, wait for the soldiers to run out, then rush into the crowd and blow himself up. TIME: Did you order the bombing? SHKAKI: That is handled by our mujahedin in Palestine. It is not logical to give orders or plan from outside. Of course I have contacts with the movement. TIME: Did you know in advance that the attack would take place? SHKAKI: This is something I will not talk about [he grins]. TIME: Did you know Anwar Soukar and Salah Shaaker, the bombers? SHKAKI: By chance I knew Salah Shaaker. When he was a boy, he used to come to my home in the Gaza Strip; his older brothers were in the nucleus of the movement. But I myself did not choose the bombers. This was the work of our military branch. Some of the youths insist they want to lead a suicide operation--perhaps because they are influenced by the teachings of Islamic Jihad. My orders are to persuade them not to go--to test them. If they still insist, they are chosen. TIME: How can you justify the killing of civilians, like the Hamas bombing that killed more than 20 in Tel Aviv last October? SHKAKI: You have to ask our brothers in Hamas about that. Our orders are to attack Israeli military targets and settlements. But we Palestinians face an organized army, and most of our losses are civilians, not mujahedin. We do not give orders to attack civilians, but this happens in every war.
TIME: What was your reaction to the Beit Lid bombing? SHKAKI: This was the biggest military attack ever inside Palestine [outside the Arab-Israeli wars]. TIME: It seems to give you satisfaction? SHKAKI: It gives satisfaction to our people.