Bulldozer plows into cars, bus in Jerusalem

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:25 am

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25489631

Driver goes on rampage, killing 2, injuring dozens before being shot dead

Israeli civilians and police gather around smashed cars on a main road in Jerusalem on, Wednesday, after a man rammed into them with a bulldozer.

BREAKING NEWS
updated 42 minutes ago

JERUSALEM - A Palestinian bulldozer driver went on a rampage on a busy Jerusalem street Wednesday, plowing into a string of vehicles, killing two people and wounding dozens of others before he was shot dead by police.

The attack wreaked havoc in downtown Jerusalem. Traffic was halted, and hundreds of people fled through the streets in panic as medics treated the wounded.

At the scene of the attack, two cars were flattened and a third was overturned. A bus also was overturned, and another bus was heavily damaged. Israel's national rescue service confirmed two deaths, and the two bodies lay motionless on the ground covered in plastic.

"I saw the bulldozer smash the car with its shovel. He smashed the guy sitting in the driver's seat," said Yaakov Ashkenazi, an 18-year-old seminary student.

Israel's national rescue service said at 22 people were wounded, with at least 14 people hospitalized.

Injured people sat dazed on the ground amid piles of broken glass and blood stains on the street. A baby had blood all over its face, and the driver of the bulldozer was slumped motionless over the steering wheel.

"Where's the baby? Where's the baby?" said one witness.

Yosef Spielman, who witnessed the attack, said the bulldozer picked up a car "like a toy."

"I was shocked. I saw a guy going crazy," he said. "All the people were running. They had no chance."

In a statement, police said a "terrorist" had carried out the attack but gave no further details.

The attack occurred in an area where Jerusalem is building a new train system. The project has turned many parts of the city into a big construction zone.

Editor's note: This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:28 am

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At least four people were killed and 44 were wounded - one seriously, one moderately and 42 lightly - on Wednesday afternoon when a bulldozer driver went on a rampage in downtown Jerusalem.

Police said that the driver plowed his vehicle into two public buses, toppling them over, and slammed into several cars.

A soldier on leave took the gun from an elite policeman at the scene and shot the terrorist dead. The soldier, Moshe Klessner, 18, is the brother-in-law of IDF officer David Shapira, who killed the terrorist in the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva attack, Channel 10 reported.

Witnesses said the driver was killed after a struggle with two policemen. One of the elite policemen was lightly wounded, apparently by gunfire, indicating that the terrorist was armed.

Police said the incident was definitely a terror attack, emphasizing that the terrorist was carrying an Israeli identity card and was a resident of east Jerusalem.

The attack, at the junction of Jaffa Street and Rechov Sha'arei Yisreal, set off a panic in the area. Dozens of people ran through the streets to flee the scene of the attack and a car was still stuck under the bulldozer. Police said it was unclear how many people were in the trapped vehicle.

The bulldozer was apparently being used for construction work on the Jerusalem light rail project.

Asaf Shalev, who was near the scene of the attack, told the Jerusalem Post that he heard about "an accident" and ran to the area. He described how he saw a "path of destruction" leading from the construction site and numerous policemen "examining the bulldozer."

Speaking to reporters at the scene, Infrastructure, Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai said urgent legislation must be passed to restrict the movement of east Jerusalem Arabs and destroy the homes of terrorists.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 12:28 am

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/021619.php

The Palestinian Arab who killed three people in a bulldozer rampage yesterday was a freelance jihadist -- once again underscoring the international need for the Islamic groups who profess to oppose today's jihad activity to begin to teach actively against it. But they are not doing so, and will not do so, and if you think they are doing so or will soon, I have a very fine bridge to sell you.

"Palestinian's rampage the work of `lone attacker,' police say," by Dion Nissenbaum and Cliff Churgin for the McClatchy Newspapers, July 2 (thanks to JCB):

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian construction worker commandeered a construction vehicle and rampaged through central Jerusalem on Wednesday afternoon, killing three people in what police later described as the spontaneous act of a lone attacker.

Dozens were injured as the front-loader flattened cars and flipped a crowded bus before its driver was shot dead by an Israeli soldier on leave who scrambled onto the vehicle.

Though the attack evoked memories of the politically motivated suicide bombings that demoralized Jerusalem during the second Palestinian uprising, police said that the man appeared to have no ties to militant groups.

"This appears to have been a spontaneous attack," Israeli Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen said.

Three militant Palestinian groups claimed responsibility for Wednesday's rampage, but police officials dismissed all of them as groundless.

Police identified the driver as Hosam Dwayyat, a married, 30-year-old father of two who lived in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem.

Israel's Channel 2 reported that Dwayyat had served two years in prison for rape and attempted murder.

[...]

The attack created confusion and pandemonium as people scrambled for safety.

Assaf Nadav , the driver of the bus that the front-loader flipped on its side, said he wasn't sure what was going on when he saw people running away from the construction vehicle as it headed toward him.

"He hit me lightly and I rolled down my window to ask him what he was doing when I saw him lower the scoop and turn the bus upside down," Nadav said on Israel Radio. "Screaming would be an understatement."

Two armed men and a police officer scrambled onto the vehicle, wrestled with the driver, then shot him, Israeli Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said.

The men thought the attack was over, but the driver then lurched forward in a scene captured by nearby cameramen.

In a video that aired on Israeli television, one person rolls out of the way of the Caterpillar as the three armed Israelis wrestle with the driver.

A man in shorts and a T-shirt, later identified in Israeli news reports as 18-year-old Moshe Plesser , shoots the driver twice in the head, who then slumps in the seat.

Plesser, an Israeli soldier who just finished basic training, said the man yelled "God is great" in Arabic before trying to continue with his rampage.

"He yelled Allahu Akbar and hit the gas," Plesser told Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:04 am

After attack, Israeli Jews fear for security

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080703/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians

JERUSALEM - A day after a Palestinian construction worker's deadly rampage in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday called for reviving the practice of demolishing the homes of attackers' families, and his chief deputy proposed cutting some Arab neighborhoods off from the rest of the city.
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Israeli Jews expressed anxiety about security, and Palestinians wondered what the violence will mean for their already tenuous position in society.

A day earlier, a Palestinian drove a huge earth-moving vehicle over cars and into buses, killing three Israelis and leaving a swath of wreckage on a main Jerusalem street before security forces shot him to death.

The attacker, Hussam Dwayat, 30, of east Jerusalem, had no problem moving around the Jewish part of Jerusalem. After Israel captured the Arab section of the city in the 1967 war, it gave residency and Israeli ID cards to the Arabs who lived there, giving them freedom of movement around Israel.

The attack brought calls to reconsider at least some of the benefits the 250,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem receive from the Israeli government.

"I think we have to be tougher in part of the measures that we take against terrorists, especially terrorists who are part of our internal fabric of life," Olmert told an economic conference at the Red Sea resort of Eilat. "If we have to demolish houses, we will demolish houses. If we have to revoke social rights, we will revoke social rights. It's inconceivable that we are slaughtered and they will have all the privileges that our society grants our citizens."

Israel had in 2005 stopped the practice of demolishing the homes of Palestinian attackers after the military determined that it did not work as a deterrent.

Olmert's dovish vice premier, Haim Ramon, proposed cutting off the attackers' home village and others in east Jerusalem, where about 50,000 Arabs live, by rerouting the West Bank separation barrier to put the villages outside Jerusalem's boundaries. It was a rare call by a senior Israeli official to effectively redivide Jerusalem, reflecting concern that preventing attacks by Jerusalem's Palestinians is virtually impossible.

Four months ago, a Palestinian from a neighboring village shot and killed eight young students at a rabbinical school in Jerusalem.

On Thursday, police forbade Dwayat's family from setting up a mourning tent at his home in the village of Sur Baher.

A group of men sitting under a eucalyptus tree said some of Dwayat's relatives had been questioned by police. Dwayat's widow, Jamileh, sat on a sofa, wearing a long black dress and head scarf, biting her fingernails and greeting well-wishers with dark, sad eyes. Her two children had been sent to a cousin's house.

"He was a martyr," said one female visitor as she kissed Jamileh Dwayat on the cheeks in reference to the honorary title given to Muslims killed in attacks on Israelis. The attacker's father, Taysir, had earlier forced mourners to stop shouting "martyr" at the home, insisting to Israeli reporters that his son was under the influence of drugs during the rampage, was not motivated by hate, and that the family supported coexistence.

Police said the attacker apparently acted alone. He had a criminal record, police said, and had been ordered to demolish his home in 2005 because it was built illegally.

Residents of Sur Baher expressed concern about their jobs.

"I have always worked in Israel and I have great relations with my boss," said a man who would give only his first name, Moussa, for fear his Jewish employer at a west Jerusalem hotel would disapprove.

Meron Benvenisti, deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1967 to 1979, said the vast majority of Palestinians in the city value the benefits linked to Jerusalem residency.

"The majority cherish their status. They would not try this (such an attack)," he said. "There is no way you can generalize, but the majority of east Jerusalemites would like the status quo to continue."

Many Jews in Jerusalem said all Arab residents of the city should be kept out of the Jewish side.

Boaz Ariel, 43, a Jewish teacher at a theater school, said he was steering clear of construction vehicles.

"It's not nice to say, but Israel is soft after these attacks," Ariel said as a bulldozer with sand passed next to him at a construction site for a light railway, the location of Wednesday's attack. "We shouldn't let them work here as long as there are attacks. ... We have to throw them out."

But one Jewish contractor said his company would go under if he couldn't employ Arabs from east Jerusalem. Foreign workers from China and Thailand are too expensive, he said. He gave only his first name, Dror, because he said his company bans employees from talking politics.

If Israel prevents Arabs from entering the Jewish side of Jerusalem, "at restaurants the dishes will all be dirty, and at hotels all the sheets won't be changed, and all construction work will stop because there won't be any workers," he said. "They keep our economy stable. We can never separate."

In another development, Palestinian militants fired a rocket at Israel, violating a June 19 truce, the military said. No one was hurt, but Israel's Defense Ministry decided to close Gaza crossings Friday in response, cutting off vital supplies. The Hamas government in Gaza called the closure a breach of the cease-fire.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:06 am

Father of baby who survived Jerusalem attack found

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080703/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_attack_baby

JERUSALEM - A 5-month-old baby whose mother threw her out of a car window to save her from a Palestinian attacker has been reunited with her father.
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The child's mother was killed during the deadly rampage Wednesday by a Palestinian from east Jerusalem, who slammed a construction vehicle into buses, cars and pedestrians. A total of three people were killed before the attacker was shot dead by security officers.

Seconds before her car was struck, Batsheva Unterman saved her baby by throwing the child to safety. Initial reports had said the 33-year-old Unterman was injured but survived.

The baby escaped unhurt. It took hours to locate the child's father, who did not know his wife and baby were involved in the attack, rescue services said Thursday.

The baby's great grandfather was Israel's chief rabbi from 1967-1973.

Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:41 am

So what are we trying to make this a 'love gone bad' excuse now?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080704/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians_attacker_s_girlfriend

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian who went on a deadly rampage on a Jerusalem street this week had spent years in a romantic relationship with a Jewish Israeli woman, relatives said, a rarity in a city where such ties between Arabs and Jews are nearly nonexistent.
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In an interview with an Israeli paper Friday, the woman, identified only as "S," said the attacker, Hussam Dwayat, fathered her child, now 7 years old.

Dwayat, 30, crushed three people to death and wounded dozens on one of Jerusalem's busiest thoroughfares Wednesday with the massive earth moving vehicle he used in his job at a nearby construction site. He smashed through traffic, drove over cars and flipped a crowded city bus on its side.

Dwayat was married to a Palestinian woman, Jamileh, 20, with whom he had two young sons, 3 and 5. But a previous girlfriend was a Jewish Israeli who at one point even stayed with his parents for 1 1/2 months, said his mother-in-law, Hoda Dabash.

"They were engaged, until her family took her away. They didn't like him," Dabash told The Associated Press.

The former girlfriend told Israeli media that the relationship began 12 years ago and lasted more than five years. In an interview published Friday in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, she said Dwayat fathered her son shortly before the relationship ended.

She said she did not believe his attack was motivated by extremism. "He really didn't hate Jews. The fact is that he was with me. It's insanity, but the motivation was not nationalist," she told Yediot. "The problem was that he smoked a lot of drugs. Maybe it's because of that."

She said they broke up because Dwayat became abusive. "He would really hit me hard, but I still loved him. I was willing to convert to Islam for him," she said.

She said she eventually pressed charges and he served time in jail. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed Dwayat had served time in prison, but would not say for how long or on what charges.

They two not been in contact since a few months after she gave birth, she said, adding that the child does not know Dwayat was his father. Instead, she registered him as the son of a man who she subsequently married and divorced. The woman lives with the child in a West Bank settlement near Jerusalem, the paper reported.

The newspaper did not explain why it did not identify her. But it was likely she maintained anonymity to protect herself and her son from anyone who might be outraged by their relationship to the attacker.

The woman's story was consistent with other descriptions of Dwayat that portrayed him as distant from the typical profile of an ideologically motivated attacker.

The Israelis who stopped Dwayat by shooting him heard Dwayat shout "God is great," an Arabic phrase used by Islamic militants as a battle cry. But there has been no indication that Dwayat was connected to any militant group, and the usual trappings of premeditated militant attacks, like a videotaped last testament, were absent.

Residents of his neighborhood, Sur Baher, described Dwayat as an unpopular troublemaker with drug problems.

The morning after the attack, female relatives began shouting "martyr" outside Dwayat's home, but his father, Taysir, quickly silenced them. Taysir told Israel's Maariv daily that his son was a drug addict and not a "terrorist."

In the past, some in east Jerusalem have played down the possibility of nationalist motives for fear of retribution from Israeli authorities. On Friday, defense officials said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the military to prepare to demolish Dwayat's home and the home of another east Jerusalem attacker who killed eight Jewish seminary students in a shooting spree in March. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss policy decisions.

Israel had abandoned the contentious policy of demolishing militants' homes in 2005. Critics say it punishes innocent family members without achieving its declared aim of deterring future attackers.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in 1967 and annexed it. Most of the Arab residents who make up one-third of the city's population are not Israeli citizens. But they carry identification cards that allow them to move freely around Israel, unlike the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.

Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:35 am

Knesset House Committee to convene for discussion on Jerusalem bulldozer attack

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The Knesset House Committee is set to convene Monday for a discussion on last Wednesday's bulldozer attack in Jerusalem.

Representatives from the police, State Attorney's Office, the Jerusalem Municipality and MDA, as well as relatives of the victims, the terrorist's lawyer and residents of his village, Sur Bahir, are due to participate in the debate.