After weeks of positive signs from the Middle East, the news on Friday evening came as a shock. Once again, a suicide bomber had managed to find his way into Israel and blow himself up. Four young Israelis waiting to get into a Tel Aviv dance club were killed in the blast and a further 50-plus were injured. On Monday, most of Germany's major dailies comment on the terror attack.

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung argues that, despite recent indications that the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians was getting back on track, the attack was not a complete surprise. After all, it would have been naive to hope that the long-standing conflict had reached its end. The paper does, however, point out that there will likely be more such acts of violence in the future and that a return to the violence of the Arafat era is not impossible. The solution? Use such attacks as levers to redouble peace efforts rather than as excuses to break off negotiations. "If each terror attack were to be transformed into a catalyst for an intensification of the political process (toward peace), the fighters of the Islamic Jihad would quickly put down their weapons."

Most of the other German dailies point their fingers squarely at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as the one put in the spotlight by the most recent attack. Pointing to claims of responsibility by the Islamic Jihad terrorist group in Syria, the Financial Times Deutschland says that it is time for the Palestinians to sever their ties with Syria. That Israel is now threatening an attack on Syria is, the paper writes, nothing new. But, "if the peace process is to move forward, then the Palestinian leadership must also distance themselves from their false allies."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung goes a bit easier on Abbas. The paper's editorial outlines the difficulties facing Abbas saying that it will be difficult to combat groups like Islamic Jihad solely with "administrative measures." The world needs to come to Abbas's aid. "Abbas's difficult position also stems from the fact that the militant groups in Palestinian territories are supported by countries that represent the world of yesteryear. Israel can't change that and neither can Mahmoud Abbas. Only a comprehensive, persistent and fair Middle East policy followed by the world community would (perhaps) be able to change anything."

Finally, the center-left Sueddeutsche Zeitung also has a solution for Abbas. "Abbas needs to get over his fear of a civil war, take off the kid gloves and disarm and disperse the terror groups. As long as Abbas believes he can ... integrate them into the political system and let them take part in parliamentary elections in July, terror will not be expunged. It will only be institutionalized."

The second main story in German papers on Monday was more domestic in nature. For weeks, the country's once-beloved Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has been wallowing in scandal. The accusations against him? A directive originating in the foreign ministry and issued to German consulates in Ukraine, Russia and Belarussia in 2000 that created a visa loophole allowing hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans to stream into Europe. The accusation is that many of those who took advantage of the loophole were human traffickers smuggling women into Germany for work as prostitutes. Other Eastern European crime rings, it is said, also took advantage.

Over the weekend, and amid calls from the conservative opposition that he resign, Fischer made an important public admission of error, saying he takes responsibility for the mishap, and attempted to deflect criticism from the government and from his own party onto himself. All major German dailies carry the story on their front pages and most carry lengthy editorials on his admission.

Not surprisingly, the conservative papers are unwilling to forgive Fischer so quickly. The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung prints a scathing editorial on its front page detailing why German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Fischer's own Green Party are so quick to forgive him. He is indispensable for the political success of both. "There is no one else in the Greens who can declare 'mea culpa' with such a remorseful look on his face, restore the grass roots' faith as do-gooders and, in the next breath, sound the counterattack on the opposition. In completing this triple-jump, nothing was too cheap for Fischer, not even the reference to the brave, freezing Ukrainian population who are now allegedly being labelled as criminals by the (opposition). The Greens accept this because they sense what they are without Fischer: nothing."