I always know there has been a terrorist incident in southern Israel when the helicopters start arriving at the regional hospital opposite my place of work. This time I didn't need to wait for the helicopters: Tuesday's suicide bombs exploded near enough for me and my colleagues at Ben Gurion university to be shaken by the blast.

It was closer to home in another sense: we were all aware that it could have been any one of us on those buses, popping out of our office to go shopping. And given that it was the last day of the holidays before the country's schoolchildren returned to their desks, we were all worried that maybe, just maybe, one of them was on those buses.

Family and colleagues immediately got in touch,as did the foreign correspondents wanting to know more about this place which has, until now, been well off the map of terrorism. Beersheba, the normally peaceful regional capital of the Negev in the south of the country, has finally made it into the international headlines.

Beersheba is almost equidistant between the Gaza Strip and the southern section of the West Bank, approximately 20 minutes' drive from each. In the past, when cheap Palestinian labour used to flood into Israel from the occupied territories, it was a place where the two groups of Palestinians met, exchanged information and disseminated their fight for independence from one territory to the other. But those days have long since ceased: today there is no more than a trickle of Palestinians allowed into Israel by the authorities.

Israeli rightwingers, who oppose Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan, have used Tuesday's attacks as another reason not to go ahead, arguing that to disengage from Gaza would be equivalent to rewarding the terrorists. The fact that the suicide bombers did not come from Gaza, but from the Hebron region in the West Bank, is irrelevant to them. Any act of terrorism is, they say, an indication that territorial withdrawal will not bring an end to violence. And when the incident takes place in a major town so close to the Gaza Strip, this argument is strengthened.

The lull in bombings over the past six months has been taken by most Israelis as proof that the security wall has served its professed purpose: keeping the bombers out of Israel. The proponents of the wall, which is still being built even though the international court of justice has ruled it illegal, point to the Beersheba bombings as further proof of its value. Why, they ask, did terrorism move southwards this week? Because, they answer, this is the only region where suicide bombers can still cross with relative ease from the West Bank into Israel.

If anything, Tuesday's bombings will serve to speed up Israeli plans for the wall. It was reported on Ynet, the Israeli internet news channel, that Sharon undertook a tour of the southern parts of the West Bank last week to push ahead with the construction of the wall in this region, now that it has been completed elsewhere. When construction does go ahead, it will more closely follow the course of the green line. The few Israeli settlements there are more isolated and would not necessitate a rerouting of the border, as elsewhere.

The idea that the wall - and only the wall - has brought about the lull in bombings is far too simplistic. There are a host of other reasons. International pressure on Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to take a firmer hold of fundamentalist groups is of great importance. So, too, has been the impact of Israel's hardline military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which have destroyed much of the military and civilian infrastructure, so much so that the situation for Palestinians is worse than at any time since 1967.

Not that that makes much difference to some Israeli policymakers, who immediately after the bombings accused the Palestinian Authority of not doing enough to rein in the terrorists. The Israeli government is intent on discrediting Arafat, who is therefore linked to every outrage despite the fact that his declining authority has left him with little control over Hamas and Jihad elements.

According to the biblical narrative, Beersheba was the home of Abraham, the common father to both Judaism and Islam. His name is often used to promote it as a city of peace and dialogue between the two peoples. But this week it became a city of violence and blood. It reminded the residents of this outlying town that the conflict does not bypass anyone. Hopefully, when the immediate - and understandable - emotional reaction has passed, it will remind us that peace, if it ever comes, will be for the benefit of all - not just the residents of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

David Newman is professor of political geography at Ben Gurion University of the Negev newman@bgumail.bgu.ac.il