The counterman at the snack-food shack called A Blast of a Kiosk spotted the ownerless valise next to the busy bus stop and called the police to report a suspicious object. While he was talking on the phone and simultaneously trying to shoo people away from the bag, the bomb went off, spraying the metal pellets that had been packed with the explosives.

The kiosk got its name after it was destroyed in an-early 1990s suicide bombing at the same spot, in front of the Jerusalem Convention Center, and then was rebuilt and defiantly reopened. That time, the owner was luckily late for work. This time, his brother-in-law, the vigilant counterman, sustained shrapnel wounds.

You don't actually need Mahatma Gandhi's spiritual values, or even a Gandhi, to pull off a mostly nonviolent revolution. That's one lesson from the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for those Israelis and Westerners who have long asked, "Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?" Whether that implication will be applied in the West Bank -- and against whom -- remains an open question.