Minutes after a suicide bomber walked into a bakery, the only business open in a sleepy residential section of Eilat, minutes after he blew himself and three innocent people to pieces and pulp, the Islamic Jihad was ready with its explanation.

The attack was meant to help bring an end to weeks of Palestinian infighting that has claimed 60 Palestinian dead in the Gaza Strip since December, The Associated Press quoted a Jihad website as saying.

Lest anyone mistake a suicide bombing as a perverse act, lest anyone erroneously identify the killing of non-combatants as something out of the ordinary, something that has tarnished Palestinians in the eyes of the world, something that might cast Palestinians as murderers of innocents, something that might set the cause of Palestinian independence back another several years or so, something that will keep international humanitarian aid even farther from the people in Gaza who desperately need it, the Jihad was ready with the punch line:

The bombing, said senior Islamic Jihad leader Khaled al-Batsh was "a natural response to the continued crimes by the Zionist enemy."

Natural.

Just as natural as telling Hamas and Fatah, "Kiss, make up, kill the Jews."

Hamas saw the point as self-evident, hailing the attack and picking up on the Mr. Natural theme. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum praised the bombing as a natural response to Israeli military policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as its ongoing boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

"So long as there is occupation, resistance is legitimate," Barhoum said, adding that attacks on Israel were preferable to the Gaza street fights between Hamas and Fatah gunmen.

"The right thing is for Fatah weapons to be directed toward the occupation not toward Hamas," he said.

You can probably guess what came next.

Fatah spokesman Ahmad Abdul Rahman condemned the attack, saying, "We are against any operation that targets civilians, Israelis or Palestinians."

Let this much be said: Israel has never devised - not in Dimona, not in underground RAFAEL plants - a weapon against the Palestinian national movement that is anywhere near as effective as the Palestinian's own suicide bomber.

Let the comments fly in, from bottomlessly self-congratulatory supporters of Palestinian statehood in Australia, New Zealand, Berkeley, from all those places where white people like yourselves exterminated indigenous populations with impunity. And stole the land on which your condo was built.

I support a Palestinian state no less than you. But if you spin your impassioned defenses of suicide bombing as a necessary tactic - a natural tactic - a natural response, you'll be spinning that line, and waiting for an independent Palestine, for much longer than any Palestinian should ever have to wait.