Attack Kills Three In Jerusalem; Sparks Fresh Debate On East J'salem Arabs
The scene of Wednesday's terror attack in downtown Jerusalem. Three Israelis were killed in the first attack in Jerusalem since March.
by Staff Report
The bulldozer terrorist attack in the heart of Jerusalem Wednesday by an East Jerusalem Arab that killed three women and injured dozens has led to calls for tighter controls on the capital city’s 200,000 Palestinians.
Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai, who also chairs the right-wing Shas Party, said the attack demonstrated the need for Israel to legislate restrictions on the movement of the capital city’s Palestinian residents who live in East Jerusalem. When Jerusalem was united in the 1967 Six-Day War, they were offered full Israeli citizenship. Most refused and were given special identity cards that give them greater freedom of movement than Palestinians living in the West Bank.
But political analyst Yossi Alpher questioned whether such limitations of movement would work.
“They
should be given full Palestinian status and taken off the Israeli population lists,” he said. “But restricting their movement would only be worse. ... It won’t be possible because their degree of integration [into Jewish West Jerusalem] is too highly developed.
“Paradoxically, anyone who adopts that action is taking a step to separate East and West Jerusalem, and talking of that aids those who want to make Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state,” Alpher said.
The terrorist, a 31-year-old father of two who was shot and killed at the scene, began his rampage on Jaffa Street shortly after noon. He began driving down the center of the four-lane road — which is restricted to two lanes while construction crews install a light rail system — and running over vehicles in his path.
“I was sitting at the front desk and saw people running into the building saying there is a crazy man driving a bulldozer,” said Gabi Shachar, a guard at Jerusalem Capital Studios, a building that is home to several foreign news organizations, including the BBC and Reuters. “At first I thought he was just out of control,” Shachar told The Jewish Week. “Then I saw the tractor drive up to the No. 13 bus, lower its shovel and pick up the bus and turn it on its side.”
Because of the cement barricades on either side of the road, cars were unable to flee as the terrorist bulldozed his way into about a half-dozen oncoming cars in its path.
“People where shouting, ‘Shoot him, shoot him,’” Shachar recalled, adding that he ran after the bulldozer but did not shoot because he did not have a clear shot.
At one point, Shachar said he saw the terrorist bring the shovel down on top of a Toyota, killing the driver while her infant baby sat in a carseat in the back, apparently not seriously injured.
As he walked through the shattered glass and blood splattered on the ground, Shimon Pabok, 22, a new immigrant from Brooklyn, said he narrowly escaped injury when the bulldozer barreled into the bus stop at which he was standing.
Pabok said the terrorist knew well how to work the bulldozer because he watched while the man crashed it head-on into a commercial van and then “went back and forth over it.”
He said he watched from about 15 feet away as the vehicle flatted the front of the van.
“I started screaming, ‘Police, police,” before the bulldozer turned and headed for the bus shelter.
“I thought it was like in a movie,” he said. “It just missed me.”
Former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, who arrived in New York Tuesday to brief members of the Israel Policy Forum, called the terrorist attack a “very, very grave event.”
“It’s typical in periods of stagnation that terrorists do what is called terrorism without ammunition,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have seen it in the past. ... I’m not sure someone dispatched this terrorist.”
The attack came at almost the same time that Israel reopened border crossings into the Gaza Strip, which was closed since Hamas took control of the area following elections there last year. Israel permitted the transfer of construction material — including cement — as well as fuel and food.
The opening was part of a 2-week-old cease-fire arranged by Egypt with Hamas, which promised to stop rocket and mortar fire into Israel in exchange for the delivery of needed supplies.
There was no suggestion that the terror attack was related and Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, said the attack was simply proof that “terrorism never stops.”
“The PLO will say it is stopping and then Hamas or Islamic Jihad will begin,” he said. “Details change but the patterns remain the same. This is the standard procedure we have had for 60 years. There is always some group that objects to the occupation or the issue of refugees. The basic approach is always the same — terrorism.”
The attack also took place one day after Israeli and Syrian negotiators held indirect peace talks with Turkey serving as a mediator. A London-based newspaper quoted Turkish diplomats as saying that direct talks would likely begin after one more round of negotiations.
But Steinberg expressed doubts, saying Turkish officials “have a strong interest in overselling what they have been doing in their role as mediators. It’s not clear if there has been any substance [to the talks]. I don’t expect a breakthrough.”
He noted that both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Syrian President Bashar Assad would be attending a Paris conference July 13 but were not scheduled to meet.
“How serious could the negotiations be if they can’t even have a face-to-face meeting,” Steinberg said.
Israel was also continuing talks through German intermediaries to secure the return of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid two years ago. The Israeli cabinet authorized a prisoner swap involving Samir Kuntar, who brutally murdered a Nahariya man and his four-month old baby in 1979, even though Olmert said it is believed that both soldiers are dead.
Although it was a difficult decision, most Israelis were said to believe it was a correct one.
“Not returning the bodies would have been very demoralizing to the army and to the society,” said Michael Oren of the Shalem Center. “But by negotiating with terrorists to release hostages, you are setting up the next kidnapping.”
Nevertheless, Oren said Israel has done it before because the soldiers who are captives are our collective “sons and our brothers, not some nameless kids from Oklahoma. ... It’s an Achilles heel, but it’s also a strength.”
In another development, the U.S. State Department called “foolish” an ABC News report this week that quoted a Pentagon official as saying Israel was on the verge of launching a military strike to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
The official had said Israel would launch such an attack once Iran was poised to have enough highly enriched uranium to create a nuclear bomb or when it was about to take delivery of a sophisticated Russian air defense system.
Sneh discounted the ABC News report, saying: “We shall decide ourselves when the red lines are crossed.”
He said Iran continues to produce highly enriched uranium and that if Russia delivered the sophisticated anti-aircraft system, “those who help the aggressor to defend themselves support the aggression. Russia cannot hide behind the claim that this is a defensive system.”
There were unofficial reports this week that Iran would suspend its nuclear program for at least six weeks as a gesture to the West in advance of a new round of talks the West hopes will convince Iran to abandon its nuclear aspirations.
Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, broached the idea for the suspension two weeks ago. But Sneh said Solana “would give them the moon if they would just stop enriching uranium.”
“Solana’s statement said not a word about Iran supporting terrorism or of its undermining [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas or about the capitulation of the democratically elected government of Lebanon” to Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah.
“He offered this evil regime a respectable place in the Middle East,” Sneh said. “They see in front of them a very weak Western world.”
Meir Javendanfar, an Israeli expert on Iran, said there are those in Iran who “believe that the threat of war is non-existent and that there is nothing the West can do against Iran politically, economically or militarily. Israel is sending a message that they are wrong and that although Israel does not want war with Iran, the Iranians should take negotiations very seriously and find a solution that suits everybody, not just Iran.”
Israel correspondent Joshua Mitnick contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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