Mike Hanna: Latest suicide bombing in Jerusalem

CNN's Mike Hanna

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- A suicide bomber killed himself and slightly wounded six others Wednesday in a powerful explosion outside a luxury hotel in downtown Jerusalem, Israeli police said.

CNN's Mike Hanna filed the following report from Jerusalem:

HANNA: A man with explosives strapped to his body detonated them on a road outside a string of luxury hotels in the middle of Jerusalem. There were no serious injuries in the explosion -- the only fatality, that of the man who was actually carrying the explosive device, a man who police say was a suicide bomber.

According to two international news agencies, the militant Islamic Jihad organization has claimed responsibility for the bombing. It says the target of the suicide bomber was a security target in one of those nearby hotels.

Elsewhere, there has been a degree of quiet over the past 20 hours or so. A string of Israeli military operations directed at Palestinian targets in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip occurred over a two-day period. The target of the attacks: security offices of the Palestinian Authority. Israel says these attacks were in response to a wave of suicide bomb attacks that claimed a number of Israeli lives.

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Also, said Israel, the attack is designed to send a message to Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat to make good his pledge and arrest those responsible for planning the attacks. The Palestinian Authority leader has said that he is attempting to carry out arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists. However, he said that the Israeli military operations were hampering these attempts.

Israel says that the arrests that have been made by the Palestinian Authority are nothing more than token gestures and demanded to see a real crackdown on militant organizations.

But apart from the suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Wednesday, the region has been generally quiet since the last of the Israeli military operations. However, the bombing is a reminder of how volatile and dangerous the situation remains on the ground within the Palestinian territories and within Israel itself.

CNN: Are we now seeing a pause in the strikes against Palestinians in order to give Yasser Arafat a chance to do what he has promised to do?

HANNA: There's been no official statement from the Israelis to this effect, but that is the interpretation. Israel has said throughout that these operations were sending a message. They were symbolic to a certain degree, showing how it can strike at the Palestinian Authority should the Palestinian Authority not succeed with demands to clamp down on militants.

We must remember that on Tuesday, the Israeli Cabinet announced that it now views the Palestinian Authority as a terrorist-supporting entity -- that, in other words, meaning that the Palestinian Authority is being seen as an enemy.

However, the fact that no operations have taken place for nearly 24 hours now does appear to be an indication that there is a breathing space being allowed here. Israel is waiting to see what action is being taken by the Palestinian Authority in the terms of the demands by Israel and by the U.S. administration.