Tel Aviv

Olga and Kate Gelonkin, mother and daughter, strolled together under a parasol on a beautiful Saturday watching the sun glint off the Mediterranean and dreaming of being anyplace else but here. "Canada, maybe," said Olga, 42, a computer programmer who now sells shoes. "Somewhere in America. But not New York. Somewhere quiet," said her 20-year-old daughter, a biology student. Olga Gelonkin, a divorcee, immigrated to Israel three years ago from Moscow, hoping to escape crime and anti-Semitism.

A hot afternoon at the beach turned even hotter yesterday as hundreds of enraged Israelis, some in bathing suits, attacked the Hassan Beq mosque across the oceanfront boulevard from the disco where a suicide bomber killed himself and 18 others Friday night. "We should tear this place down. We hate the Arabs," said Dor Pincas, 18, who wore a motorcycle helmet as he threw rocks at the mosque. Arab youth inside the mosque compound threw stones back, as Israeli police wrestled to take control.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday postponed ordering the armed forces to retaliate for a suicide bombing that killed 19 people in Tel Aviv Friday night in order to give Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat a short time to stop the violence. Under intense pressure from the United States and Europe to rein in both Islamic extremists and members of his security forces, Arafat issued his first public call for a cease-fire since the latest Palestinian uprising began in late September.

A suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of a crowd waiting to enter a discotheque in Tel Aviv late yesterday, killing at least 16 other people and wounding at least 85, many of them seriously. "This is one of the worst I've ever seen in 15 years because of the time, the place and the number of casualties," Tel Aviv Police Chief Yossi Sedbon said. "We do not expect that someone would come and explode himself in front of a nightclub. " It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel since a string of bus bombings in 1996.

Although I used to crisscross the continent on TWA, the airline never made much money on me. I flew regularly on what was once the greatest bargain ever for American youth: half-price standby fare. Studying in Chicago and having a boyfriend in New York, I was a familiar face around O'Hare. I took unashamed advantage of the deal and usually got a seat, but if I had to wait for the next flight, no tragedy. TWA took off for LaGuardia every hour, so even if I was anxious to get going, it wasn't like missing a grown-up obligation like an appearance in court or a meeting with your kid's math teacher.

As the usual dance of death unfolded in the Israeli periphery, thousands frolicked at the hedonistic Love Fest in Tel Aviv. During the dark week of the lynch in Ramallah the Israel opera performed an opulent Don Giovanni before packed audiences. It's funerals on the front pages, restaurant reviews in the back. As I drive the swim team car pool I listen to casualty figures of the latest terrorist bombing Wednesday in an Israeli town half an hour from my house; in the back seat the kids discuss how many laps they swam today.

A high-profile foreign politician spent the day in the Philadelphia area yesterday, but it was not exactly a diplomatic mission. It was, basically, just a lot of schmoozing. Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai toured Cherry Hill and Philadelphia as part of a short junket to the United States aimed at building relationships with the American Jewish community and bolstering support for a foundation that pays for capital projects beyond the reach of his city's budget. Huldai, a former Israeli Air Force brigadier general and high school principal, was elected mayor of the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa in October 1998.

Sleep? Forget it. Tonight - on the eve of his big trip - Max Wolf, 90, expects he'll be too excited to get much shut-eye. "I hope I'm going to sleep on the plane," he said, laughing. It's a dream, this trip. To visit Israel, finally. And to be there at such a momentous time: the 50th anniversary of the country's founding. "I'm sure I'm going to be overwhelmed, just touching my feet on that sacred ground," said Wolf, who lives in Brith Shalom House off City Avenue in Wynnefield Heights.

He is blue-eyed, fair-haired. He arrived in Israel last month on a flight from Amsterdam with a video camera, film, maps and $4,000, looking rather like an ordinary tourist, albeit a prosperous one. But Steven Josef Smyrek, a 26-year-old German, was allegedly no tourist. It is charged by Israel that he was carefully trained as a suicide bomber, and was planning an attack in either Haifa or Tel Aviv on behalf of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. If the charges are to be believed, they signal a new, deadly wave of terrorism directed against Israelis.

Whenever I want to take the pulse of Israel, I head for Tel Aviv's Hatikvah quarter, a bustle of open-air produce and meat markets, small shops, and restaurants famous for grilled kebab and fish. This quarter is home to many Sephardic Jews, whose families emigrated decades ago from Muslim countries like Iraq, Syria, Iran and Yemen. Hatikvah residents lean rightward in their politics. But they veered left in 1992 to help elect the Labor Party's Yitzhak Rabin, who went on to sign the Oslo peace accord with the Palestinians.